It’s tucked away in the announcement that Final Fantasy XIV’s beta on the Xbox Series X|S starts on February 21st, but the announcement does confirm that players will be required to pay a monthly subscription to Xbox Game Pass in order to subscribe to the game. That means that at minimum, you will be paying for a $9.99 monthly subscription to Microsoft on top of the existing $14.99 subscription for the game itself; while there are discounts available based on subscribing for longer periods, there’s no scenario wherein subscribing on the console will not be more expensive.
Long-time observers of FFXIV will recall that producer and director Naoki Yoshida has repeatedly stated that the primary factors slowing any port of the game to the console were Microsoft’s insistence on a separate subscription as well as a requirement to have Xbox-only servers be available. While the latter is clearly no longer the case, the former appears to have been accepted. No direct statements have been issued on the matter, but it winds up as an impediment from Microsoft to fans who are looking forward to the game on this console.
Of course, our older readers may recall that this is part of a long-standing tradition of Microsoft making its consoles less appealing than others.
