The idea to develop Final Fantasy XI as an online game was conceived by Hironobu Sakaguchi when establishing Square Pictures headquarters in Hawaii. Impressed by western MMORPGs that he discovered there, such as EverQuest, Sakaguchi convinced Square to begin the development of their own MMORPG and suggested that it be based on the Final Fantasy series. The team responsible for Chrono Cross was assigned to the development of Final Fantasy XI after the English localization of the former title. The game was the first developed under Square's new philosophy to develop for "all platforms and media". Hiromichi Tanaka, the producer of the game, has stated Final Fantasy XI is heavily influenced by Final Fantasy III, especially in its battle and magic systems. According to Tanaka, Square put in Final Fantasy XI what they could not put in the first Final Fantasy titles due to technical limitations, thus making Final Fantasy XI the "most [representative] Final Fantasy of all the installments". The game was developed and ran on the Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti GPU, which the President of Square Y?ichi Wada described as the most powerful graphics processor available at the time. The game cost two to three billion yen (~$17¨C25 million) to create along with the PlayOnline Network Service and was assumed to become profitable over a five year timespan. By creating a unified game world instead of different ones balkanized by language, development costs were cut 66%. Since recurring monsters of the series are known by different names in the Japanese and English versions of the other installments, it was decided for Final Fantasy XI to use both Japanese and English names for different varieties of the same monsters.
It was originally announced that there would be a simultaneous release on the PlayStation 2 and PC as well as concurrent Japanese and American release, but this was later changed. There was also discussion of an Xbox release, but it was abandoned mainly because of its small 2 GB hard drive. Originally announced in January 2000 at the Yokohama Millennium Conference, there was a great deal of negative press. There were questions raised about naming the game the eleventh in the series, since it was not clear whether the game would have a structured story, which it ended up having, and the title of Final Fantasy Online was suggested. Following an August 2001 beta test in Japan, a public Japanese beta test was done in December 2001.
Following its PC release, Final Fantasy XI was listed as one of IGN's most anticipated PlayStation 2 games of 2004. Sony launched a multi-million dollar ad campaign to promote Final Fantasy XI along with the PlayStation 2 hard drive add-on which the game required. Having been released on the PlayStation 2 as well as the personal computer, it became the first cross-platform MMORPG ever created. On June 14, 2002, the game server was down for four hours for maintenance to the database servers, bug fixes on the text interface, and a new patch for the game client. This is thought to be the first patch ever released for a console game. Other early issues included complaints by American players that experienced Japanese players had already completed all the quests. Square Enix responded by adding new servers in order to have game worlds with fewer expert players.
Final Fantasy XI is one of the first cross-console video games, and has continued to update its software to allow the game to run on new consoles. Square Enix noted that Nintendo's use of "friend codes" was the primary reason Final Fantasy XI was not brought to the Wii. In December 2006, the PlayStation 2 versions of PlayOnline and Final Fantasy XI were able to install and run on the PlayStation 3. The Vana'diel Collection 2008 discs for the PlayStation 2 had installation issues on the PlayStation 3, causing them to be unusable. This problem was fixed on December 18, 2007 when firmware update 2.10 was released. After working with Microsoft to resolve Final Fantasy XI's incompatibility issues with Windows Vista, Square Enix released a downloadable version of the PlayOnline client which is compatible with the operating system, although small bugs have appeared.
Expansions
All the expansions, including Rise of the Zilart, have been released on PlayStation 2 (except in Europe), PC, and Xbox 360.

Title	Year	Notes
Rise of the Zilart (???????, Jir?to no Gen'ei, lit. Phantoms of the Zilart)	JP 2003 NA 2003 PAL 2004	When news was first circulated about an expansion to Final Fantasy XI, it was thought that the game's title would be Final Fantasy XI: Vision of Girade and it was unclear whether it would be a free upgrade or not. The Xbox Live version was also beta tested to see how their online playing system supported Final Fantasy XI. A demo version of the Xbox 360 release of the game was the first game on the Xbox 360 to require the use of its hard drive addition. The game introduced the Dragoon as well as the Samurai and Ninja.
Chains of Promathia (????????, Puromashia no Jubaku, lit. Curse of Promathia)	JP 2004 NA 2004 PAL 2004	On November 7, 2006, a new version of "Vana'diel Collection" for 2007 was released including the original game and both expansions. Forty new areas were made available to explore, as well as new quests and missions, but no new jobs for characters to learn or new game mechanics.
Treasures of Aht Urhgan (????????, Atorugan no Hih?, lit. Hidden Treasure of Aht Urghan)	JP 2006 NA 2006 PAL 2006	The game was also released on the Xbox 360 bundled with all three of the expansions released to date, and on the PC as "Vana'diel Collection 2007". The expansion included three new jobs; Puppetmaster, Corsair, and Blue Mage. As of June 12, 2007, the mercenary rank "Second Lieutenant" was introduced and various other issues and fixes were addressed.
Wings of the Goddess (???????, Arutana no Shinpei, lit. Divine Soldiers of Altana)	JP 2007 NA 2007 PAL 2007	The fourth expansion of Final Fantasy XI was announced on May 12, 2007 at the Square Enix Party event in Japan. The expansion shipped for PlayStation 2 and Xbox 360 on November 20; the PC version was delayed until November 21 due to manufacturing issues. The expansion went live and became playable on November 22, 2007. On November 20, 2007, Square Enix updated Final Fantasy XI in preparation of the expansion. This update included a new large-scale battle known as "Campaign" and various new spells and job abilities. The Dancer and Scholar jobs were introduced in the expansion, and their equipment known as "artifact armor" was released in the March 10th, 2008 update.