Final Fantasy 11 mobile reboot canceled by Square Enix & Nexon over quality concerns

Originally dubbed Final Fantasy XI Reboot, the game would have allowed players to re-explore the FF11 MMORPG, but has officially been shelved.

TJ Denzer

March 23, 2021 8:20 AM

Quite a few years back, Square Enix teamed up with popular mobile and online gaming company Nexon to produce a mobile reboot of the Final Fantasy 11 MMORPG. The game has been fairly quiet through the last several years of supposed development. That said, news broke recently that the game has officially been canceled with both Square Enix and Nexon citing quality concerns.

The news on the cancellation of the mobile game, tentatively called Final Fantasy XI Reboot, came out of Gamebiz.jp. According to reports, Square Enix and Nexon both determined that the quality of the game was not up to the standards that players would expect out of the Final Fantasy franchise. Both companies further agreed to shelve the project and redistribute staff away from it to other projects. Final Fantasy XI R was originally slated for launch in 2016.

Our 2016 look at the Final Fantasy 11 mobile reboot showed promise, but several years later, it looks like Square Enix and Nexon have not made the progress they wanted on the game.

The Final Fantasy 11 mobile reboot was in development as far back as 2015. We got one of our first looks at the game in 2016. As is probably expected, Final Fantasy XI R was set to reintroduce players to Square Enix’s original MMORPG world of Vana'diel where they would be able to see what the world had to offer and play any of the races and classes from the game in an extensive collection of quests. Final Fantasy 11 was considered an impressive first step from Square Enix as it entered the MMO market alongside the likes of World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, and Everquest. Nonetheless, years later, Square Enix is also pouring a lot of its resources into the pretty successful Final Fantasy 14, which continues to see updates and expansions and is preparing for launch on next-gen systems later this year.

It’s a shame that the Final Fantasy 11 mobile reboot was shelved, but there’s certainly no lack of MMO Final Fantasy to explore. It will be interesting to see where Square Enix and Nexon go next with the staff that were involved. Stay tuned as we continue to follow this story.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.

Filed Under