Via Joystiq comes the word that FFXI will not be coming to the Wii, despite the console’s capability to handle the game. Square Enix’s Senior Vice President Hiromichi Tanaka indicated his company is in talks with Nintendo to correct this situation. The issue appears to be the Friend Codes, which are required for two Wii owners to interact. As Joystiq’s Ross Miller puts it “Final Fantasy XI on the Wii would surely be profitable even if gamers were required to enter over 300,000 12-digit codes to fully experience the world. That’s how much, we suspect, Wii owners are clamoring for Nintendo to join the rest of its brethren in this generation.” With the 360 already playing host to a Massive Game (FFXI, in fact) and the PS3 slated to become home for several titles, Nintendo has to be chomping at the bit to get a MMOG developer on board with the waggle.

I find this interesting, because there a couple of other questions to account for on the Wii besides friend codes. I’m going to assume off the bat that motion control is out of the question. You’d almost be requiring players to use a Wavebird or classic controller. What about the Massive game down the line where motion control is an option for the Wii? Aside from the obvious and illicit ideas that immediately come to mind, there are a number of awesomenesses that come to mind there.

The most obvious one, to me, is crafting. The usually incredibly dull experience of creating an item (I’m looking at you EQ2) could be eliminated via motion-control minigames. Instead of doing a puzzle to fire a kiln and shape a bowl (or whatever) you could actually do so, using the controller to pull the clay to your desired form. Just as with MMOGs on the DS, I think Nintendo has a lot they could offer Massive gaming … if they’d ever get off their collective arses and get with the program.

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