While we already knew that the PS4 version of Final Fantasy XIV: a Realm Reborn would run at 1080p native resolution, there has been a bit of back and forth on its frame rate, with Producer and Director Naoki Yoshida first mentioning a 60 frames per second target, and then changing the tune to 30 FPS locked.

Today in an interview on 4Gamer he gave further news that will make frame rate enthusiasts happy:

As I mentioned so far the quality of the visuals of the PS4 version will be basically like maximum settings on PC. The processing of the shadows is slightly different, so it's not a complete equivalent, but the frame rate reaches 60 FPS.

It's interesting to see that this fully confirms the results of the screenshot comparison we ran a few days ago (including the slightly different shadows).

When asked for a more precise answer about the frame rate Yoshida-san specified that 60 FPS is the upper limit.

The game was designed and optimized to keep the frame rate above 30 FPS as much as possible, but in extremely crowded situations like the Odin FATE framerate will drop in the twenties, which happens even on many powerful PCs because there are about a hundred of character models displayed and a whole lot of spell effects going on.

As long as you don't play on an extremely high-end PC, since it's this similar to the PC version and you're running on the highest settings of the PC version even on PS4, your enjoyment will be unchanged.

As an interesting side note, Yoshida-san also mentioned that the PS4 version managed to output more than 60 FPS during development, but that caused the console's heat to raise considerably. According to him, due to the small casing of the PS4 developers have to consider heat carefully, and that's why the version of the game for Sony's new console was given an upper limit of 60 FPS.

As expected, the thermal runaway of the PS4 chassis can be scary, so we decided to cap the frame rate to 60 FPS.

It's certainly quite refreshing to see a developer being this open about this kind of details. If you're wondering what the "thermal runaway" is, you can check out a detailed explanation here.

Yoshida-san explained that the PS4 version of the game runs faster by far than the PC version played on a computer with specs similar to the console, since the PS4 is much better optimized and doesn't have the disadvantage of using slightly different architecture and shaders depending on the brand and model of the video card. That's the advantage consoles have over PCs.

Moving on to remote play, he admitted that there's a slight lag, but it's very good to craft, gather or doing the daily quests. It's possible to do easy dungeons, but Yoshida-san would not advise trying to fight Titan from the PS Vita.

The development team is also considering carefully the possibility of using the Vita as a second screen, but for now nothing specific has been planned, even because they don't want to give PS4 players too much of an advantage over players on other platforms.

Despite all this PS4 love, Yoshida-san also had something to share for PC players, mentioning that since 64 bit support is now working internally, the DirectX 11 version of the client will enter full development so that it'll be released by when the Chinese version will hit the shelves. The new client will also come with a completely new benchmark.

As an added bonus, Square Enix announced that the game gathered 1.8 millions of registered accounts, and 6.71 million of characters have been created. Players have played Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn for 418 million hours, equivalent than a little less than 48,000 years.

The PS4 version of the game will enter its first open beta phase on February 22nd, and will be released on April 14th.