Final Fantasy Creator Wrecked A Controller To Play Final Fantasy 14

Oliver Brandt
·2 min read
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Sakaguchi Xbox controller

Square Enix just held its big Final Fantasy 14 FanFest over the weekend, where it showed off a host of new content coming to the MMO, as well as crossovers with other games and series. Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi made a surprise appearance at the show, and revealed he not only plays Final Fantasy 14, but has a special controller for it.

On the Final Fantasy 14 FanFest livestream, Sakaguchi reiterated that he’s a huge fan of Final Fantasy 14, having previously said he can sometimes spend up to 12 hours a day on the game. Despite not wanting to work on it – he says he’d rather be a fan (thanks TheGamer) – Sakaguchi has put some work into playing it… by wrecking a controller.

As revealed on stream, Sakaguchi uses a normal Xbox One Elite controller to play Final Fantasy 14, along with a chat pad attachment that slots into the bottom of the controller. The chat pad, though, is missing pretty much all of its buttons, but that was by design — Sakaguchi took the buttons off himself.

According to Twitter user Genki, Sakaguchi removed every button except the ones he needed for a few specific commands, so he doesn’t accidentally press any buttons he didn’t intend to. FF14 producer Naoki Yoshida reportedly joked that Sakaguchi was “too hardcore” when it came to the game, referring to the intentionally broken controller and Sakaguchi’s dedication.

Final Fantasy 14 was revealed to finally be coming to Xbox early next year, with the popular MMO coming to Xbox Series X|S via an open beta “soon” with the full release coming in Spring 2024. Microsoft said that the Xbox version of the game will support 4K on the Series X, and faster loading times on both consoles.

Final Fantasy 14 is currently available on PC, PS4, and PS5.