Final Fantasy publisher/developer Square Enix has never officially announced that it would be bringing its online game Final Fantasy XIV to the Xbox 360, but they have been public about their desire to bring the MMO to Microsoft's system. Now they're being open about why they can't do it.

At E3 2009, Sony made a splash when it announced at its press conference that it had the console exclusive on MMO Final Fantasy XIV. Just hours after that, however, Square Enix officials were pointing out that despite the de facto Sony console exclusive (the game's also coming to PC), that Square Enix wanted to bring the game to the Xbox 360.

Now Square's Hiromichi Tanaka says that Final Fantasy XIV won't be coming to the Xbox 360 because of Microsoft's strict Xbox Live policy, which keeps the system closed to things like MMOs. He says that Microsoft made a "one-time" exception for Final Fantasy XI, but since then has been unwilling to budge. We've heard from many developers over the years that concurred that Microsoft's controlled approach to Xbox Live makes things like MMOs practically impossible to do from a publisher's standpoint.

via Massively