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"The decision [to make the team changes] was officially made in late November, although we had been talking along those lines with what are now the core members of the new team," new producer/director Naoki Yoshida told Famitsu in an interview published this week. "I was in a position of responsibility within the FFXIV directorial team, and the state of the game is something that's been concerning me for a long time, so it's not as if this came out of the blue. Ever since we launched last September, we've received a great deal of requests and complaints from players. That certainly played a role in the reshuffling, but there's also the fact that if we're going to call this a Final Fantasy game, then the entire company needs to pitch in and raise the standard of quality." Yoshida's name likely isn't too familiar to overseas gamers -- outside of his involvement with FFXIV, his main credit in Square Enix is the Dragon Quest Monster Battle Road line of Japan-exclusive arcade trading card games. Since officially taking over as leader of the MMO in December, Yoshida's been actively linking with the userbase via questionnaires and discussions posted on the official website.
It seems fair to say that Square Enix would have liked Final Fantasy XIV's launch to go a tad more smoothly. The MMO, which debuted on the PC in September, met with poor reviews and annoyed players worldwide, eventually leading to producer Hiromichi Tanaka's ouster in December. Most of the core development team has since been reshuffled, and the PlayStation 3 port -- originally announced for early 2011 -- has now been put on indefinite delay.
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