Not surprisingly, today’s Square Enixi/Eidos press conference focused on Final Fantasy XIV; the next epic MMO in the Final Fantasy series.  We learned some details about the game yesterday ay Sony’s presser, but Squeidonix (or whatever you want to call them) did a bit of clarification.

While the game was announced as exclusive to PS3 at the Sony press conference, it is actually coming to PC as well. Additionally, they are considering other hardware options as well at this time, meaning that its console exclusivity may only be temporary, opening the door for a later Xbox 360 release. Also revealed was the fact that he game is planned for a global simultaneous release in 2010 in English, Japanese, German and French, and that the video shown at yesterday's press conference was a mixture of both pre-rendered, and in-game footage, so definitely expect some stellar quality graphics.

The Square Enix team discussed making the best possible Final Fantasy game several years ago, and felt that the MMO genre would be the ideal way to go. FFXIV development started about 4-5 years ago, in simultaneous development with FFXI, and went full-bore in the past few years. World of Warcraft was mentioned as an influence for FFXIV, but plans are to take it further by implementing new systems that are different from other MMOs.  There are no ties between the new MMO and Final Fantasy XI, despite yesterday's press conference showing some similarities in characters types and races.  The world of Final Fantasy XIV is a new and different world from that of Final Fantasy XI. The similarities in races were created for fans with an affection for characters in FFXI. The team explained the new characters as if it were a movie with the same actors playing as different characters.

Final Fantasy XI fans need not fear, as the team has confirmed that the there will be continued development for the MMO in the upcoming years, and no plans to phase it out.  FFXIV will not be using the Play Online system, but rather play via friends list.  Additionally, players should expect battles of many versus many, as well as many versus one.  The servers will have a similar set up as FFXI with worldwide cross regional servers. There is no confirmation of regional servers. Final Fantasy XI players can choose any servers now, but the team is seeing that people prefer to stay on one server, and so they are still trying to find a good balance.  In terms of the FFXI and FFXIV communities, they will be treated independently, but if there’s enough interest, they would consider connecting the games in some way.

As enlightening as all these details are, we are far, far away from any actual playable goodness; there isn’t even a beta testing schedule yet, much less a release window.  Patience is a virtue, people.