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Remember When ARR Would Fail...Follow

#1 May 20 2015 at 12:30 AM Rating: Excellent
Remember a year or two ago, when so many people said ARR would fail, the subscription model would be replaced with a F2P scheme, SE would go belly-up and all of us would be finding other games?

http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/05/12/square-enix-profits-double-thanks-to-mmo-and-mobile-titles

Yeah... it was funny then, and it's funny now.
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#2 May 20 2015 at 1:27 AM Rating: Decent
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People said the same thing when Apple released their iPad. And look at how many times Nintendo turned themselves around despite multiple doom saying. You can find plenty of similar stories sits around outside tech and gaming as well. For gaming, I do think people tend to go too passionate which often leads to wrong judgement. Pejoratively, we call that fanboyism/fangirlism.

The future of many products and businesses is very uncertain. Quite often it feels like dice rolling and random walk. At the same time, there are people who know how to make calculated bets and informed judgements, and keep their emotions and passion in check. Those are people who are mostly likely to to get their guesses right and succeed because they have loaded their dice.

Edited, May 20th 2015 3:29am by scchan
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#3 May 20 2015 at 1:27 AM Rating: Decent
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Oops double post.

Edited, May 20th 2015 3:28am by scchan
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Amanada (Cerberus-Retired) (aka MaiNoKen/Steven)
-- Thank you for the fun times in Vana'diel

Art for the sake of art itself is an idle sentence.
Art for the sake of truth, for the sake of what is
beautiful and good — that is the creed I seek.
- George Sand

A designer knows he has achieved perfection,
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but when there is nothing left to take away.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
#4 May 20 2015 at 4:18 AM Rating: Decent
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Thayos wrote:
Remember a year or two ago, when so many people said ARR would fail, the subscription model would be replaced with a F2P scheme, SE would go belly-up and all of us would be finding other games?

Yeah... it was funny then, and it's funny now.

It's not as funny as looking to IGN to analyze and predict SE's earnings reports. This stuff is public record. If you have google and even a small understanding of just how varied the sources of this consolidated income are, you'd probably have restrained from trying to use this as an example the last time I pointed it out.

What did SE themselves say about FFXIV in their own report?

Don't get me wrong, it's quite impressive for SE to turn profits like it has and I'm certain FFXIV has something to do with it. I just don't understand why people carry on about it as if only games have anything to do with consolidated earnings.

Does anyone know what happens when you spend less money(developing titles, lowering operating costs, cutting benefits, ect.) and make more money publishing other developers titles? Any guesses at all? IGN pls Smiley: dubious
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HaibaneRenmei wrote:
30 bucks is almost free

cocodojo wrote:
Its personal preference and all, but yes we need to educate WoW players that this is OUR game, these are Characters and not Toons. Time to beat that into them one at a time.
#5 May 20 2015 at 8:21 AM Rating: Excellent
Sure, but let's acknowledge that a game with 500k+ subscriptions pulling in probably more than $5 million to $8 million revenue per month is a huge driving force.

This game is incredibly profitable for SE. With an expansion around the corner, the numbers will only get better, too. All those people who predicted doom and gloom were flat-out wrong.

By the way... Weren't you one of those people?


Edited, May 20th 2015 7:33am by Thayos
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#6 May 20 2015 at 8:50 AM Rating: Decent
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A little early to tell yet how successful or unsuccessful the game is going too be long term. I think it will be some time after the expansion comes out the future will be more clear.

If the expansion is more of the sameO sameO people will be board. If it truly adds something new it could be really successful. The game has been doing well, I am even surprised with nothing new how many people are still logging on when I get on. That can change in a heartbeat. If this game does not add something new and another games does or a new game does it can change like that.
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#7 May 20 2015 at 9:12 AM Rating: Excellent
Agree, Nash, but only to the point that the same could be said about any game.

SE has found its groove with FFXIV, and Heavensward won't need to be groundbreaking to get people to stick around. In fact, I think the only way FFXIV really bombs at this point is if SE either lets the game grow stagnant (as happened with later expansions in XI) or tries to get too cute, which I don't think will be an issue, based on what we've seen of Heavensward.

Any MMO that doesn't grow is vulnerable to discontent, but that hasn't been a problem for ARR, which has seen numerous considerable updates from patches alone. While you're right that nobody can predict what will happen four or five years from now, I simply don't see any obvious red flags that the game will have any hardships over at least the next two or three years. The fact SE is already planning the expansion after Heavensward is another great sign, but the $ is the best sign of all.

One thing I can think of that could make or break the game in the next few years: SE deciding whether to drop ps3 support. I remember an interview with Yoshi-P awhile back where he'd said they planned to support PS3 through Heavensward, but he was non-committal about future expansions.

For now, though, enjoy the ride! We've got ourselves a game. Smiley: cool

EDIT: Just curious, but are there any big MMOs planned for 2015 or 2016 that would conceivably threaten XIV? Another theme from some doubters when ARR launched was that it wouldn't hold up against LoTR Online or Wildstar, but ARR did just fine (in fact, it was LoTR that went FTP and Wildstar's population that bombed). I'm not aware of any big-name MMOs coming out in the near future that might be perceived as similar obstacles. The only other MMO on my radar at the moment is EQ Next, but I've seen nothing definitive about that game recently.


Edited, May 20th 2015 9:11am by Thayos
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#8 May 20 2015 at 10:40 AM Rating: Excellent
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I agree it is hard to pat SE on the back in a hyper-competitive market which can be volatile and charged by gamers widespread opinions about what is stimulating. Keeping today's gamers happy is no easy feat. You won't see sales figures and/or profits on that scale simply by cutting costs. They are in the entertainment business and from experience we know brand name alone won't save a Final Fantasy title (No matter how much I might have liked aspects of the previous version).

The earnings report is equally hard to refute, Net sales for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2015 totaled ¥167,891 million (an increase of 8.3% from the prior fiscal year), operating income amounted to ¥16,426 million (an increase of 55.8% from the prior fiscal year), and recurring income amounted to ¥16,984 million (an increase of 35.5% from the prior fiscal year).

It is fair to say cutting costs can improve profit margins but as a video game company you have to sell games to make money (or cash shop if you want). Those numbers are impressive.
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#9 May 22 2015 at 10:19 PM Rating: Excellent
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Thayos wrote:
This game is incredibly profitable for SE. With an expansion around the corner, the numbers will only get better, too. All those people who predicted doom and gloom were flat-out wrong.

By the way... Weren't you one of those people?

I don't think anyone is disputing that the game is successful, just that it's not the leading cause of SE turning profits.

I was only ever doom and gloom about the 1.0 version. I never said that ARR would fail, but I was definitely skeptical about it's long term success in a floundering MMO market that is already saturated. I also wasn't wild about the fact that SE entered another MMO into direct competition with the most successful FF title to date. It didn't and still doesn't make sense to me, but that never led me to believe that ARR would fail.

My problem here is with IGN and not the fact that you want to bring light to ARR being successful. I would also point out that in our last exchange, one of the things I was stressing was how registered users != subscribers and that MMOs generally retain about 30% of their original hype train over an extended period of time. The 500k+ number you give seems to line up with the 2 million registrations that was being used at the time.

I also think you're not seeing the whole picture here. There was a lot of money invested into XIV since it's early beginnings that doesn't seem to be taken into account.

Let's say you built a farm and decided to go into the produce business. You have the cost of the land lease, nutrients and water to enrich the soil, tractors and plows to prep it for growing, ect. ect. So while coming back from the market with pockets full of money from the sales of your initial crop might seem like a wild success, you also have to compare what you earned in sales against what you invested into the farm.

It generally takes quite a while to earn back what you put in. I'm thinking that this is the reason why SE's language about how ARR is doing is quite a bit different from the glorified accounts boasted about in IGN articles. Again there's nothing wrong with giving ARR due respect on how far it's come, but these articles you use aren't very realistic. You can't really call ARR a true success until it's crossed over the line of recouping investments into actually turning profit. I don't think we're there yet and even when we do get there, what really matters will be what happens after that and how well they're able to sustain it.
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Rinsui wrote:
Only hips + boobs all day and hips + boobs all over my icecream

HaibaneRenmei wrote:
30 bucks is almost free

cocodojo wrote:
Its personal preference and all, but yes we need to educate WoW players that this is OUR game, these are Characters and not Toons. Time to beat that into them one at a time.
#10 May 23 2015 at 3:53 AM Rating: Excellent
ARR's success is about more than just profits. The game is a critical success that wiped away the bad taste of 1.0. That's huge for SE. If it weren't, then they never would have bothered with ARR.

That aside, there is a good chance ARR has already (or may soon) break even. I read the average MMO budget is about $100 million, but I imagine ARR cost significantly less for three reasons:

1. SE was able to recycle many resources from 1.0.
2. The graphics card engine for ARR is a varient of an engine SE already made.
3. Zone maps apparently make up like 70 percent of MMO budgets... Maybe this is the real reason why ARR's zones were smaller?

For me, the bigger question is when will ARR pay the bill for 1.0. Given the strength of the game, that feels like a question of "when."
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#11 May 23 2015 at 9:19 PM Rating: Decent
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When FFXI broke even there was an announcement about it. Though SE is tight-lipped about their subs, we'll probably know when they've come out of the red considering how big a triumph it will be reviving a game that was all but dead. That's not a jab. It's remarkable that XIV was able to rise out of near collapse. If I were working on the ARR project I'd wear it as a badge of honor that I was able to accomplish that, not try to brush it under the rug.

I still don't think you're considering the whole picture here. How much profit XIV has or hasn't made to date isn't really relevant. Remember, we're talking about a game that launched in 2010 and wasn't successfully re-launched until several years later. FFXI had a development budget that was a quarter of what you suggested as the average and it still took several years to recoop, despite similar subscription numbers and without the several year setback.

Thayos wrote:
1. SE was able to recycle many resources from 1.0.
2. The graphics card engine for ARR is a varient of an engine SE already made.
3. Zone maps apparently make up like 70 percent of MMO budgets... Maybe this is the real reason why ARR's zones were smaller?


Possibly all true. What you need to understand though is that it wasn't just that they weren't making money, they were losing it. I guess it sounds more attractive to say that they didn't have as much work as they would have starting from scratch, but it was still more work, it was work on something they had already paid out of the budget for and it was work being done while servers were offline.

If ARR were in the position that IGN states, SE would probably be a little more forthcoming with how it's described in their earnings reports. If you actually go back and look through previous reports you can see the pattern. "Strong performance" is the term used to describe ventures that are meeting or exceeding goals and projections. "Favorable progress" is what you see when the venture isn't losing money, but isn't making what it was expected to. Best believe that the initial budget, the expanded budget and the losses during downtime are all being factored in to the overall outlook on how XIV is doing. Not bad, not great.
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Rinsui wrote:
Only hips + boobs all day and hips + boobs all over my icecream

HaibaneRenmei wrote:
30 bucks is almost free

cocodojo wrote:
Its personal preference and all, but yes we need to educate WoW players that this is OUR game, these are Characters and not Toons. Time to beat that into them one at a time.
#12 May 24 2015 at 7:01 AM Rating: Excellent
SE the company came out of the red last year. The new CEO implemented zero based budgeting; all debts from 1.0 were wiped clean provided ARR managed to be profitable, which it did.

So no, they're never going to announce whether they've paid off the investment from 1.0 - and because of the way their budgeting is now done, probably not from 2.0 either.
#13 May 24 2015 at 7:10 AM Rating: Decent
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ARR could still fail and could still go F2P. Just as any other mmo could, there is no guarantees. Also F2P doesn't mean fail.

http://mmos.com/editorials/most-profitable-mmos-mmorpgs

http://www.gamingnexus.com/News/35577/En-Masse-announces-TERA-is-1-MMORPG-on-Steam/

http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/05/13/neverwinter-hits-16-million-players-on-xbox-one-5-free-expansions-coming-in-2015

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-01-21-elder-scrolls-online-gets-console-release-date-drops-subscription


Game has come a long way and is doing pretty damn good. But it also doesn't have a ton of competition on consoles yet. Which is going to change in the next year or so. XIV should be safe if they keep dropping content releases as they have.But I expect some of the players on consoles to wander to other games.
#14 May 24 2015 at 7:57 AM Rating: Decent
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The point of making a title like this is to make money.

They have written off the huge double development budget which pretty much says it failed to do what they made it to do.
#15 May 24 2015 at 10:39 AM Rating: Excellent
Again, to speak of the big picture, ARR wasn't made to cover the costs of two games. 1.0's failure stands on its own, while ARR is its own beast with its own objectives. It may already be turning overall profits, and it massively helped SE repair its broken image. Plus, SE now has a gamer celeb in Yoshi-P. The success of ARR includes and extends far beyond $$$.

And while F2P doesn't literally mean failure, it is clear SE would rather take the long-term steady profits of P2P and what that means for the game's Dev cycles. The fact the game is still P2P with no signs of changing says something of the game's strength.
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#16 May 24 2015 at 5:36 PM Rating: Decent
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Thayos wrote:
The fact the game is still P2P with no signs of changing says something of the game's strength payment model.


Let's go ahead and call it what it is. It could be the game's strength, just as easily as it could be director's ignorance or pride. It's already been shown that games are successful regardless of payment model. I think the only thing we can really say with any sort of certainty is that people will continue to play games regardless of the game's payment model because they enjoy the game.

Switching to zero based just means they wipe their budget periodically and only consider what was earned or lost the previous period when considering how to budget for the following period. I guess that does make it pretty clear that they didn't expect to ever get out of that hole so they decided to accept the hole as baseline and take a 'week to week' style of evaluation. Seems strange to me just based on personal experience, but for a company with so many ventures it could make sense.
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Rinsui wrote:
Only hips + boobs all day and hips + boobs all over my icecream

HaibaneRenmei wrote:
30 bucks is almost free

cocodojo wrote:
Its personal preference and all, but yes we need to educate WoW players that this is OUR game, these are Characters and not Toons. Time to beat that into them one at a time.
#17 May 24 2015 at 10:19 PM Rating: Excellent
Yeah, it was because the crater left by 1.0 was never going to be filled, but also because their gambling machine division suffered a heavy blow (they, along with Konami, were the two major pachinko machine players in Japan.) Japan made a new law that said gambling parlors could only replace their machines once a year, instead of the usual 3-4 month rotations that SE and Konami had gotten fat off. When 2/3 of your sales are killed by law.... you're gonna have a bad time.

So the new CEO of Square Enix was just like "STOP. All budgets are cancelled. All debts are cancelled. If you're not a cost center, show me the money."

The video game arm seems to be doing so admirably.
#18 May 24 2015 at 11:02 PM Rating: Excellent
Quote:
It could be the game's strength, just as easily as it could be director's ignorance or pride.


The fact FFXIV is still on a subscription model (with no rumblings of going F2P) is most certainly a sign of the game's strength.

SE's long-term plan was FFXIV being a subscription game. The game is bringing in enough revenue to contribute to the company's profits and justify the payment model. If the game wasn't doing well enough, then we'd already be hearing about it going F2P, like we are with Wildstar and ESO.

I'm kind of surprised you cite the "director's ignorance or pride" as a possible motivation for the payment model, especially because, earlier In this very thread, you seemed to indicate that money is pretty much the most important factor in determining success. You can't believe SE operates like that, then turn around and say the company would be fine with falling short of its goals just for kicks.
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#19 May 25 2015 at 2:25 AM Rating: Default
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Well I say if they keep going the same direction they are going with just dungeons and nothing outside of the dungeons, its not going to go very well.

Hunts are okay but do not offer much in terms of something fun to do or get.

The expansion I am holding off, flying mounts and new race might be a deal to some others but in reality that's the only new things they are offering.
Sure the other jobs but we've gotten those from free updates nothing new about that.

A level increase, new armor, new dungeons and area's,

I would think they would add something else to do other than dungeon fights all the time so we could get 1-2 pieces of armor from doing spamming the same dungeon over and over and over again, I personally burnt myself out, doing the same things over 10 times over really is a drag after a while you get sick of it.

I have taken breaks and I come back its the same thing, dungeons except a few things chocobo racing which seems very bad lag and hard turning, triple triad where high end card npc players can use more than 5 star cards while you only get 1 or deck don't work. golden saucer only few mini games that suck and events meh, the daily pot and weekly pot are only things worth doing.

Also hate to say it but the community in FFXIV is a very big downgrade from FFXI's, you got people who will kick you for the dumbest things, I never been kicked but I notice if some people do minor mess ups, if you don't get along or people make smart remarks people leave the runs.

it will all catch up and I do agree with someones post it could fail, its why I say its too early to be celebrating, Now I have high hopes for FFXIV though some things need to change.

Other than that FFXIV is pretty solid I ain't saying it will fail like instantly, in the long run it could.

I played FFXI for the free login week and had more fun playing that since I was gone for 2 years.

Edited, May 25th 2015 4:29am by ZanonX
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#20 May 25 2015 at 2:31 AM Rating: Decent
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Thayos wrote:
The fact FFXIV is still on a subscription model (with no rumblings of going F2P) is most certainly a sign of the game's strength.

SE's long-term plan was FFXIV being a subscription game. The game is bringing in enough revenue to contribute to the company's profits and justify the payment model. If the game wasn't doing well enough, then we'd already be hearing about it going F2P, like we are with Wildstar and ESO.


As stated before, F2P is not an indicator of failure. That stigma has long since been disproved several times over. Even if it were, there was an editorial article on the front page of ZAM about the possibility of XIV going F2P. It's not guaranteed that a game will become more profitable moving from P2P to F2P model, but an overwhelming majority of the games that have made the shift are making more money as well as reaping other benefits associated with doing so.

Thayos wrote:
I'm kind of surprised you cite the "director's ignorance or pride" as a possible motivation for the payment model, especially because, earlier In this very thread, you seemed to indicate that money is pretty much the most important factor in determining success.

"The fact that FFXIV is still on a subscription model" doesn't mean anything nor is it an indicator of anything. I was merely pointing that out. The stigma that going from P2P to F2P is an admission of failure doesn't quite line up with the subsequent success that most of those games experience after making the switch.

Do you remember what Yoshi said about why XIV wouldn't go F2P? I wouldn't blame you if you don't remember it because it didn't make sense then and after the success of many F2P games, it makes even less sense now. He essentially took a shot at SWtOR saying 'even though it's free, no one plays it' maybe a few months after a report from the producers of SWtOR said they had more people playing since going F2P. I don't think Yoshi is a scumbag so I doubt he'd knowingly lie about it. I guess it's possible, but I'd prefer to believe that he just didn't know any better. Hence the reason why I call it ignorant.

The bottom line is that games have been successful(both financially for their companies and popularity with their fans) regardless of their payment model. If XIV were to announce they were going F2P tomorrow, they'd probably get more attention for making a sound business decision rather than looking like a failure. I still cannot for the life of me find a drawback in exponentially increasing exposure to your product. /headscratch

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Rinsui wrote:
Only hips + boobs all day and hips + boobs all over my icecream

HaibaneRenmei wrote:
30 bucks is almost free

cocodojo wrote:
Its personal preference and all, but yes we need to educate WoW players that this is OUR game, these are Characters and not Toons. Time to beat that into them one at a time.
#21 May 25 2015 at 6:29 AM Rating: Good
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I'm afraid we aren't going to solve this without data and even then it might be difficult due to individual preference. For instance, I have a preference for P2P subscription model games and generally avoid F2P. That is not to say one is better. I have played plenty of P2P games that in the end I dropped like a hot potato, some I wouldn't play when they launched based on beta experience. In my mind, there is a stigma on many games because they started P2P and then quickly moved to a F2P model. The failure was in the ability to achieve their declared business plan. However, I consider Guild Wars 2 a success. They started out with a F2P model and the game is still as such widely enjoyed by a multitude of players.

We know both models work to generate revenue. I think we will be hard pressed to prove one better than another. The fact FFXIV launched as a P2P game and continues to be successfully achieving their business plan while other games attempt it and fail to achieve similar results on a P2P model suggests something special about SE and their game.

Edited, May 27th 2015 7:11am by kainsilv
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#22 May 25 2015 at 7:15 AM Rating: Excellent
F2P is not a sign of failure any more, but the longevity of F2P games is still debatable. You're not going to be a WoW killer or another Everquest if you go F2P within a year of launch like ESO did or like Wildstar is about to do. Some games may develop a second wind with the F2P model, like Lord of the Rings or TERA. Most are going to crash and burn eventually, like City of Heroes did (dying in a little over a year after going FTP, despite 7 years of success as a sub game....)

MOBAs are kind of a different story, since they're not RPGs in the same sense, and the storyline, such as it is, is very weak. F2P or B2P MOBAs like LoL or GW2 - oh god why did I just use so many acronyms in one clause - have shown that the F2P model is the preferred one for that kind of game.

#23 May 25 2015 at 7:57 AM Rating: Good
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This is the FFXI argument all over again.

You're always going to have your negative camp scrapping for every reason to call a game a failure in light of it's successes. Lucky for them, 1.0 provides a perfect scapegoat to rely upon for all their talking points.

1.0 is dust. Its assets were used for A Realm Reborn which quadrupled its initial sales expectation. It's now sitting at over four million box sales when the developers likely planned for half that number (that's a generous estimate given how low their expectations were at the start).

I remember the crows that gave this game six months before going free to play. Who lauded ESO and Wildstar as the FFXIV killer, they excused FFXIV's initial success and awards of having 'no competition'.

Look at the competition now. In the past year we saw Wildstar clump into 'super servers' and ESO go free to play. I don't even consider these games failures but they hit the makers other people were tossing on ARR for failing while FFXIV now remains as a stalwart for holding onto the subscription model.

We're less than a month away from an expansion hitting. It's time to call it. A Real Reborn was a resounding success. No game in history has pulled such a revival as a Realm Reborn did for the FFXIV title. Quite a few people really should be thinking about this right now. But they won't because who admits wrong on the internet?

Heavensward still has a chance of flopping. But SE aimed at reviving one of its flagship titles and wiping away the stain it's botched initial release had on the franchise. It more than succeeded, it created something people like and want more out of. Now lets see if they can deliver more.


Edited, May 25th 2015 10:02am by Hyrist
#24 May 25 2015 at 10:17 AM Rating: Excellent
FilthMcNasty wrote:
As stated before, F2P is not an indicator of failure.


When a game starts out as P2P, then has to switch to F2P within a year or two, then that's certainly a sign that things aren't going according to plan... especially when such a shift is coupled with news of declining server populations, bored gamers, staff layoffs and unhappy gaming executives. I honestly can't recall the last time a thriving P2P game decided to switch to F2P. Has that ever happened?

A game being F2P can be successful. But, yes, had FFXIV gone F2P right out of the gates as ESO did and Wildstar is doing, then yeah... that would have certainly been a sign of failure.

FilthMcNasty wrote:
Do you remember what Yoshi said about why XIV wouldn't go F2P? I wouldn't blame you if you don't remember it because it didn't make sense then and after the success of many F2P games, it makes even less sense now.


The Star Wars stuff is actually not why FFXIV is P2P. The Star Wars comment was just a concern he gave about the F2P model.

Yoshi-P said FFXIV is P2P because, unlike most other gaming studios, SE doesn't face pressure to repay third-party investors, which is more common among other game studios. He cited SE and Blizzard as two of the only gaming companies with this luxury. He also cited SE's long-term profitability with XI as evidence for the P2P model.

FilthMcNasty wrote:
He essentially took a shot at SWtOR saying 'even though it's free, no one plays it' maybe a few months after a report from the producers of SWtOR said they had more people playing since going F2P.


His comments about Star Wars were, in hind sight, actually somewhat justified. Although lots of people played the game for free after the F2P shift, the Freemium population seems to have petered off and the game now seems buoyed by just under 500,000 subscribers. It's actually kind of ironic... the game started as P2P, but bled so many subscribers that it had no choice but to go F2P.. and in doing so, attracted enough players and encouraged them to subscribe by heavily restricting F2P accounts! So now it's essentially a P2P game with a reputation for being F2P.

For more context, check out these articles... the path of SWTOR is quite interesting:

- http://www.kotaku.com.au/2014/12/the-state-of-star-wars-the-old-republic-three-years-in/
- http://www.pcgamesn.com/star-wars-the-old-republic/star-wars-the-old-republic-is-actually-pretty-good-now-as-long-as-you-subscribe
- http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/367/feature/8149/Star-Wars-The-Old-Republic-SWTOR-F2P-Revisited.html

The simple fact is this -- FFXIV rose above the recent parade of MMORPGs that failed as P2P games. That's definitely a sign of success.

FilthMcNasty wrote:
He essentially took a shot at SWtOR saying 'even though it's free, no one plays it' maybe a few months after a report from the producers of SWtOR said they had more people playing since going F2P.


No, this isn't a typo -- I just wanted to focus on a somewhat ironic mistake in your argument.

EA never gave information about how many people were playing SWtOR after it went F2P; all they gave were numbers for new player accounts (more than 2 million). Sound familiar? It should! That's the same metric/number Yoshi-P released to show how many people were playing FFXIV! And at the time, all you could say is how player account numbers are bloated and not at all reflective of actual server populations. You brought up some really good points about how player account numbers shouldn't be trusted, and Yoshi-P apparently shared your logic when referring to SWtOR.

kainsilv wrote:
We know both models work to generate revenue. I think we will be hard pressed to prove one better than another. The fact FFXIV launched as a P2P game and continues to be successfully achieving their business plan while other games attempt it and fail to achieve similar results on a P2P model suggests something special about SE and their game.


Yep! It's not about "F2P games are/aren't failures!" It's more about, "FFXIV was able to make a dedicated P2P model work while its competitors couldn't."

Hyrist wrote:
We're less than a month away from an expansion hitting. It's time to call it. A Real Reborn was a resounding success. No game in history has pulled such a revival as a Realm Reborn did for the FFXIV title.


Yep. And I also agree with you, Hyrist, that it's never too late for SE to ***** the pooch. But ARR exceeded expectations, restored order to SE's reputation and will continue thriving as long as SE remains intelligent with its communication and content updates.


Edited, May 25th 2015 10:28am by Thayos
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#25 May 25 2015 at 10:46 AM Rating: Decent
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I think ffxi has shown that square will kill a game before they let it go f2p, this is a pride issue. It also shows that profitability has little to do with retaining a subscription model.

If Square could pull of f2p and not lose face they would do it in a heartbeat.

They like to compare themselves to blizzard, they even said a while ago that they would like f2p more if blizzard did it. It's about pride. They will eat all manner of losses before accepting they have failed. Sad really but it's just how they are.
#26 May 25 2015 at 12:13 PM Rating: Default
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Hyrist wrote:
This is the FFXI argument all over again.

You're always going to have your negative camp scrapping for every reason to call a game a failure in light of it's successes. Lucky for them, 1.0 provides a perfect scapegoat to rely upon for all their talking points.

1.0 is dust. Its assets were used for A Realm Reborn which quadrupled its initial sales expectation. It's now sitting at over four million box sales when the developers likely planned for half that number (that's a generous estimate given how low their expectations were at the start).

I remember the crows that gave this game six months before going free to play. Who lauded ESO and Wildstar as the FFXIV killer, they excused FFXIV's initial success and awards of having 'no competition'.

Look at the competition now. In the past year we saw Wildstar clump into 'super servers' and ESO go free to play. I don't even consider these games failures but they hit the makers other people were tossing on ARR for failing while FFXIV now remains as a stalwart for holding onto the subscription model.

We're less than a month away from an expansion hitting. It's time to call it. A Real Reborn was a resounding success. No game in history has pulled such a revival as a Realm Reborn did for the FFXIV title. Quite a few people really should be thinking about this right now. But they won't because who admits wrong on the internet?

Heavensward still has a chance of flopping. But SE aimed at reviving one of its flagship titles and wiping away the stain it's botched initial release had on the franchise. It more than succeeded, it created something people like and want more out of. Now lets see if they can deliver more.


Edited, May 25th 2015 10:02am by Hyrist

FFXI and FFXIV were both successful, however FFXI success is reaching an end. A Final Fantasy can reach 4 million box sales easy minus FFXIV 1.0. Even the Fabula Nova series sold around that mark on all three games and they are the least well received.

Elder Scrolls or Wildstar were never going to steal all of FFXIV's thunder. Elder Scrolls is bigger on consoles to begin with and their minimalist approach of game systems is probably going to keep millions of people from all jumping on board. Have no delusion though, ESO will steal some of the thunder from FFXIV. If NeverWinter releases on PS4, I suppose that will steal a bit too. There is not much competition on PS4 currently unless you count DCUO or shooter mmos.

If you are referring to me(Don't know if you are). I never called XIV a failure. I even liked the original direction of XIV 1.0. ARR and on is doing fantastic and has been. I am just turned off by the combat and the dungeon only focus, the latter just shifted recently.

oops. Deleted last part because I thought I was posting in another thread lol.


Edited, May 25th 2015 2:17pm by sandpark
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