The global community of FINAL FANTASY XIV Online continues to grow as SQUARE ENIX announced the game has now surpassed 16 million registered users worldwide during a Letter from the Producer LIVE segment streamed from San Francisco. Accumulating almost six years of critical adoration and passionate fandom, the positive momentum of the MMORPG carries into the upcoming release of its third major expansion, FINAL FANTASY XIV: Shadowbringers on July 2, 2019.

Producer and Director Naoki Yoshida also revealed several new details for the upcoming expansion during the livestream, including:

• Details on battle system changes, including the introduction of the charged action system.
• Updates to the FATE system, side quests, as well the addition of role quests.
• Adjustments to job synergy and rebalancing of jobs
• Various quality of life changes and UI updates

IBM today announced it has acquired XIV, a privately held storage technology company based in Tel Aviv, Israel. XIV, its technologies and employees, will become part of the IBM System Storage business unit of the IBM Systems and Technology Group. Financial terms of the acquisition are not being disclosed. "The acquisition of XIV will further strengthen the IBM infrastructure portfolio long term and put IBM in the best position to address emerging storage opportunities like Web 2.0 applications, digital archives and digital media," said Andy Monshaw, general manager, IBM System Storage.