Final Fantasy XV Getting Spin-Off Mobile MMO, Launching First In China This Year

Final Fantasy XV is getting another mobile spin-off, this time as an MMORPG. The game, simply called Final Fantasy 15 Mobile, is said to take place parallel to the story of the main game and feature new regions to explore like continents floating in the sky.

Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad said that this will be developed by JSC (from Korea) and GAEA (from China), and then published by Oriental Pearl in China. It's being made in Unreal Engine 4. It was originally announced in 2017, but the scope of the project has expanded into a full MMO with large-scale multiplayer features. Kotaku reports that it will launch in China in the first half of this year, and follow to other regions after.

This will be Square Enix's third mobile FFXV game, but it's taking a very different approach than the others. The first, subtitled A New Empire, was free-to-play strategy game released in 2017. Then the next year, the company released Final Fantasy XV: Pocket Edition, a recreation of the main game with some minor changes--the most noticeable was a new, cuter art style. Pocket Edition was actually well-received enough to get ports on other platforms, including PS4, Xbox One, and Switch.

This goes back to the roots of Final Fantasy XV, which was originally Versus XIII. It was meant to be an expanded universe for XIII as part of a number of spin-offs. Now that XV is the most recent numbered Final Fantasy, Square Enix seems to be taking a similar approach by exploring the universe from multiple angles.