'Final Fantasy XI' expansion to be published for PlayStation 2 next year

The PlayStation 2 isn't wholly abandoned, as an expansion for massively multiplayer online role-playing game Final Fantasy XI is scheduled to publish on the 12-year-old console next year, according to this week's Famitsu magazine.

The Adoulin no Makyou ("Seekers of Adoulin" in English) expansion is coming to the console sometime in 2013, just after Final Fantasy XI celebrates its 10th anniversary. Announced earlier this summer, this will be the MMO's fifth expansion pack, the last being Wings of the Goddess published in 2007. The pack is coming to North America for PC and Xbox 360 versions of the game, but not on PS2.

The PS2 has seen a dwindling number of games published to the platform. This year's version of Madden was not published to the console, a sign that development for PS2 is coming to an end. Its successor is already six years old, and recently Sony vice president of hardware marketing John Koller stated that the company plans to support the PlayStation 3 until 2015.

We have reached out to Sony for clarification on whether Adoulin no Makyou will be the last software published for the PS2, and to Square Enix regarding its future plans for the PS2 version of XI. We will update this story with more information as we have it.