The wildly popular MMORPG Final Fantasy 14 is coming to mobile thanks to an upcoming port from Tencent.
Final Fantasy 14 Mobile is set to replicate the core experience in a new “mobile-friendly format.” Details are scarce right now, but both combat and non-combat features will be replicated for the port, along with visual elements like weather patterns.
Like other mobile ports, it appears you can play Final Fantasy 14 Mobile as an alternative to the main title, as the press release states that “veteran players can look forward to a nostalgic journey in a new format, while new players can experience the allure of Eorzea for the first time.” There isn’t a release window just yet, but it’ll be out in China first before expanding to other regions.
“It has been 11 years since FF14 2.0: A Realm Reborn launched, and this new mobile game will be a sister to FF14, aiming to recreate the grandeur of the original’s story and combat mechanics on mobile devices,” game director Naoki Yoshida said in a press release.
Tencent is a leader in the mobile games space, not only with first-party titles, but in terms of co-developing mobile ports of other top games like PUBG Mobile (Lightspeed co-developed it with Krafton), Black Desert Online, and Call of Duty: Mobile.
While the Final Fantasy 14 MMO we know of today (the original was widely panned) was originally a PC exclusive, it has expanded to other platforms over the past decade. Square Enix and PlayStation have a long-standing relationship with multiple console exclusives, so it’s on PlayStation consoles. However, Square Enix got the game on Xbox Series X/S this year, and promised more of its games would be coming to Xbox moving forward. With the mobile announcement, that leaves the Nintendo Switch as the only mainstream gaming console without the MMO.
Best of all, Final Fantasy 14 is cross-platform, so you can play with friends regardless of your platform preference. It hasn’t been clarified if this applies to mobile, but considering all the limitations of the platform and how wildly different the experience will be with a touchscreen versus a controller or mouse and keyboard, it’s unlikely. Other Tencent games like Call of Duty: Mobile also don’t support cross-platform with console or PC, although it does for iOS and Android.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.