Final Fantasy XI

Final Fantasy XI didn't arrive on Xbox 360 until 2006, roughly four years after its launch on PlayStation 2 and PC. This was not a separate version or a spin-off – players connected to exactly the same world of Vana'diel and the same servers as users of the two older platforms, just with controls adapted for the Microsoft gamepad. For Square Enix, it was also one of the first major attempts to bring Xbox 360 players a full-fledged Japanese MMORPG, which up to that point had not been common on Western consoles.

The main difference compared to 2002 was how much content already existed by that time. While the first players on PS2 and PC started with the base game without any expansion, new Xbox 360 players entered a world that had already gone through several major expansion packs – so from the start they had access to far more content, quests, and places to explore than the scope of the game at its original launch. Xbox 360 also offered a hard drive as standard, which made installing extensive game data easier compared to the consoles of the time without built-in storage, so players didn't have to deal with the limitations that owners of the base PlayStation 2 faced in 2002, since it had to purchase a hard drive separately as an accessory.

Gamepad controls were already well tried and tested at this point thanks to prior experience with PlayStation 2, so the Xbox 360 version could build on an established, controller-oriented menu system. Even here, though, fully comfortable typing and chatting with other players still worked best with a keyboard attached – the new platform didn't change the game's MMO nature, and players on all three platforms continued to share one common, constantly evolving world. Xbox 360 also became the last of the three platforms for which Square Enix released the game, so newly arriving players could already benefit from the improvements and fixes accumulated over the previous years of operation on PlayStation 2 and PC.

Why play it: Players who nonetheless prefer to plug in a keyboard for comfortable chatting will appreciate the established controller-oriented menu, building on experience from PlayStation 2, and access to improvements accumulated over the previous years of operation.