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[Column] General: Square Enix Financials
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Victor takes a look at the FFXIV mentions in Square Enix’s financials!
Read more of Victor Barreiro Jr.'s Eorzea Reborn: Square Enix Financials.
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Comments
Increase of profits is good news for Square. Means more funds for more JRPGs and other games. As well as the continued updates and expansions for their new MMO game. This gives me some hope that the rumors of Snowboarding and Blitzball will become reality. Though the patches are already frequent and meaty as is. Hopefully Heavensward follows that trend admirably.
Where is that poster who keeps saying FFXIV was doing poorly. His input surely will be here soon on some fudged figures and trumped up number accusations.
On a personal note am so pleased for FFXIV and Square Enix.
If they get Blitzball into FFXIV I will never ever fucking quit.
I'm sure he has his 'people' working on a spin for it as I type this.
Seriously, though... Awesome news for SE! Nice to see companies actually improving, unlike certain others, whom seem to be going the opposite direction.
FFXIV has reached its "Wrath of the Lich King" phase, where it is still performing admirably, but any further upward expansion via increased leveling caps would likely do it harm. Unlike WoW, where story is more secondary to the other activities in the game, FFXIV:ARR makes story telling its primary objective. The success of the game will be in keeping the desire to play with lots of other people in line with the story telling. The current state of affairs are very testy because players spend a lot of time at level 50 due to previous patch content, yet most players will eventually accumulate at level 60.
So they can't totally abandon the old content without threatening to eventually maroon many new players in a virtual ghost town. The future success of the game will depend on Yoshi-P finding an effective solution to that problem.
I don't think that lower level areas in FFXIV:ARR will become ghost shortly. There are still enough classes to be added (compared with FFXI) so that 'old players' still have enough reason to go back to the lower level areas.
Perhaps about 4-5 years down the road when the influx of new players has stagnated, the lower level areas will indeed become ghost towns, but for now I think the game will do just fine (nope, I'm not playing FFXIV:ARR anymore).
Great news for SE. I have to say that I am really enjoying my journey through Eorzea. The story component alone is worth the purchase.
The next 2 financial reports are what matters. When the dust settles from an expansion launch and certain players leave and certain players stay then we'll see what kind of financial legs FFXIV has the. For me, it was the end of the line. It's not a bad game nor bad expack, it just doesn't give me what I want from an MMORPG. So I've gone back to EQ2, WoW and FFXI to get that fix and most likely will never return to FFXIV.
I'm also not impressed with FFXV and won't be buying that either, sadly the FF game design I enjoy has gone the way of the Dodo once FF12 came out. I'm sorta sad but oh well, nothing lasts forever.
One would think after two years we'd be already past the "the NEXT milestone is what matters"-stage. The game already has proven to have strong financial legs, a solid expansion is not going to suddenly reverse everything.
This pretty much, i think we're beyond the stage where there is any real question as to whether the game is going to be a success or not, it may not be the next WoW, but its clearly carved its own niche and has a fairly stable, if growing, playerbase.
I would like to piggyback on this. FFXIV is designed so that you keep going back to all zones especially when you are working on your weapon quests.
First, as long as you have HW registered, you are not kept at level 50 'til entering those areas. You can proceed to level to 60 without ever stepping foot in a HW area, if you have the expansion.
To the main point, though...
WoW, and other MMOs of its ilk tend to be designed with built-in obsolescence. That is, once you've completed the quests/content for one area, you never have a reason to go back. It becomes obsolete. So, as people out-level those spots, yes, they tend to become ghost towns. It's the unavoidable result of such a strictly linear design.
XIV isn't designed like that.
For starters, due to the multiple-jobs-on-one-character setup, players always have reason to go back to the starting areas.
Second, the storyline quests, and others, have you traveling back to those old locations - even after you've entered Heavensward zones.
They continue to incentivize older dungeons through rewards in the DF. So people will continue to do those.
And on and on.
ARR's design is not a straight line. It's more like a spider web, with various strands leading back and connecting to others.
To use an analogy, if WoW and other typical MMOs of that type can be likened to a linear platformer, like Super Mario Brothers, then FFXIV would be a Metroidvania type game. The game always gives you reasons to return to previously explored areas, where there's more content to be experienced.
Where WoW and other themepark type MMOs are designed very much as "worlds designed around a game", ARR is designed more as a "game interwoven with a world". There is a difference.
For a more practical example, go to Gridania, Ul'dah, Limsa or even Revenant's Toll... They're still busy. There's still lots of people there. And many of them are people who are well into HW. Because there are still reasons to go to those places. Same with the various zones. There are constantly people all over in the different zones, because there are always reasons to return.
By contrast, last time I went to Stormwind, it was practically a ghost-town, far from the bustling mass of characters and mounts it was for a while. Same with Dalaran. I remember that place being packed. Last time I went out there, I think me and 2 other people were there. That's the effect of WoW's linear design and built-in obsolescence. It's an awful design practice, and leaves so much otherwise useful real-estate completely wasted.
So, unless Yoshi-P decides to make a sharp turn, unweave the spider web, and turn XIV into a straight line, with content becoming obsolete as soon as you're through it... I don't think we have to worry about anything in XIV becoming a "ghost town" any time soon.