New FFXI expansion announced

Final Fantasy XI is to get another expansion pack later this year, Square-Enix has announced.

Called Wings of the Goddess, the expansion is slated for release this coming Winter and will be released simultaneously for PC, PS2 and Xbox 360 in all territories.

So far, details on the expansion are scant, but the creators have released a video displaying lots of clues of what to expect.

PlayStation 3 owners hoping for a port of the game will be disappointed, though, as series director Koichi Ogawa told Eurogamer this week that the game won't be coming to the new Sony console, estimating that to port it over appropriately would take between four and five years.

Spanish and Italian players will also be feeling left out, Ogawa confirmed, despite Square-Enix's recent localisation push which saw the game translated for German and French audiences.

"It took us around a year and a half to add German and French translations to the game as it was only ever designed to display Japanese and English. Sadly we don't have the time to do the same localisation job for Spanish and Italian users as there simply aren't enough subscribers from those regions."

Ogawa added: "As we do all of the localisation here in Japan it's also often a struggle to find translators in these languages who are able to work with us for such a long period of time." So now you know which GCSEs to do.

Meanwhile Ogawa dismissed suggestions that demand for the game was on the wane, with subscriber levels still around the half a million mark. "Currently only around ten or twenty people each month leave the game worldwide, and this is usually offset by newcomers."

"There's always an explosion of use over the holidays in each territory and players usually drop of around the end of the month before their credit card bill gets paid off," he added.