FFXIV China - Not meeting Squares expectations

scorpex-x

Interesting news story about how XIV is doing in China on its 1 year anniversary and some new cash shop developments involving instant level 50 services.

Naoki admitted the game's operation in the past year in China failed to meet Square Enix's expectation. There were some reasons, according to Naoki, that prevented the game's success in China: the impact of flourishing Chinese mobile game market, the P2P model which was not popular in China, and the time that needs to be invested to play the game.


2p.com/36053631_1/Report---Final-Fantasy-XIV-China-Server-May-Get--Boost-Service-by-Wei.htm


I find his excuses for the failing to be very silly personally, blaming mobile gaming, the p2p system and that you have to spend too much time playing it?... but he had to say something I guess.

goboygo

Build a good enough game and you don't have to make excuses as to why people aren't playing it, I guess.

Warlyx

1 year anniversay already? for a p2p in china is a lot lol

lobotaru

Keep in mind this is the company that did the Dues Ex "Augment your preorder" thing. They also actively lock any threads dealing with population related comments in their general forum. There was a thread there specifically talking about how things are becoming kind of inactive lately and they locked it without warning. Contrast this with the fact they'll let any number of other heated threads criticizing the game continue to the point of players attacking one another and it paints a bleak picture of what they have told their forum mods to do.

"Go out and silence anything related to the population." The fact they are so adamant at hiding active player numbers shows they aren't doing well. This is the company that was touting how many active players it had shortly after the FFXIV:ARR release only to change it to "total accounts" after we can only presume they were losing players. 

Ghavrigg

The game is doing great elsewhere, so whatever. It is what it is, and it's surprising a P2P game in China is even still running. I still consider that a success!

Ghavrigg

drivendawn said:

Ghavrigg said:

The game is doing great elsewhere, so whatever. It is what it is, and it's surprising a P2P game in China is even still running.

Korea as well for now. :b

Hopefully optimistic for them, and so far so good as far as reports of player activity go. In a year we'll hear back about how the numbers have dwindled ever so slightly and it's failing regardless. lol

ceratop001

With 129 million Chinese, 73% of all gamers, playing MMO games, it is by far the largest MMO market in the world. China also has the highest number of gamers in the world (173.4 m) and 65% of these are paying players.

It's a rather big deal for gaming companies to do well there...

I hope they turn things around, because they have a solid game on their hands to promote. Granted not my cup of tea, but that doesn't mean a lot of people enjoy the game.

scorpex-x

drivendawn said:

That's to bad. The game must be failing in general right? Scorpex-X was not here for months to bash and tell us all how the game is failing. However jumps at the first negative news. >.>

People ask how the Chinese version is doing here is the news on that, not my fault that it's not doing well.

Don't shoot the messenger driven!  If you don't like it don't look at it.

d_20

In addition to what Naoki said, Japanese products don't seem to be very popular in China these days.

TiamatRoar

China luvs their F2P.  It's generally considered the birthplace of the F2P P2W cash shop business scheme. (one of the reasons R2Games made that business presentation on the subject was because they wanted to explain the business model they were explicitly copying from China)

Loke666

I think a lot of the problem is that Japanese games are very close to western games. Chinese games do badly here and western games do badly there. And while some might argue that Wow have done well in China it honestly was really small even at peak compared to Chinese games like Perfect world.

scorpex-x

drivendawn said:

scorpex-x said:

drivendawn said:

That's to bad. The game must be failing in general right? Scorpex-X was not here for months to bash and tell us all how the game is failing. However jumps at the first negative news. >.>

People ask how the Chinese version is doing here is the news on that, not my fault that it's not doing well.

Don't shoot the messenger driven!  If you don't like it don't look at it.

It doesn't bother me because thats just one country XIV is under performing in and you shoot yourself with your past on these forums. 

Well it bothers you because if it didn't you would of not replied, not once but twice so... it kinda did.

I have little interest in the game anymore, I totally gave up on it with the last lackluster expansion flopped out to the fanfare of a wet fart.   So I don't visit here much anymore, nor do many others though so that's not saying much.

azarhal

scorpex-x said:

and the time that needs to be invested to play the game.

Is he saying it's not long enough? Because last I heard, Chinese loved to grind (or did that change lately?).

Albatroes

We have to keep in mind that China gets access to a lot of games that the western market doesn't or at least gets access before the western market does, so not every game will honestly do well everywhere. They've had what B&S PSO2 etc over there for years I think? SE is....very motivated. Heck, they even thought the sells of Tomb Raider were poor when the game sold millions of copies.

Cname

Ghavrigg said:

The game is doing great elsewhere, so whatever. It is what it is, and it's surprising a P2P game in China is even still running. I still consider that a success!

It is a fairly common misconception is that P2P games have no longevity in China - in fact, they can survive as long if not longer than their counterparts outside China.

Examples:
Fantasy Journey West online - P2P and thriving with 400+ servers in 2015 after 11 years with record user numbers in Q4 2014 according to Netease earning reports.

Jian Xia 3, the first MMORPG by a Chinese online game company to buck against the trend of F2P recently celebrate a successful 6th year launch by announcing a upcoming remaster version updating 20GB of art assets.

Let's not forget WoW remains the dominant themepark P2P MMORPG in China as in the West...

CCP games maintaining a separate Eve Online shard in China just on local subscriptions... 

Even Perfect World, the F2P bogeyman, continues to maintain a subscription version of its eponymous online game in China after 10 years.
 

jesteralways

Cname said:

Ghavrigg said:

The game is doing great elsewhere, so whatever. It is what it is, and it's surprising a P2P game in China is even still running. I still consider that a success!

It is a fairly common misconception is that P2P games have no longevity in China - in fact, they can survive as long if not longer than their counterparts outside China.

Examples:
Fantasy Journey West online - P2P and thriving with 400+ servers in 2015 after 11 years with record user numbers in Q4 2014 according to Netease earning reports.

Jian Xia 3, the first MMORPG by a Chinese online game company to buck against the trend of F2P recently celebrate a successful 6th year launch by announcing a upcoming remaster version updating 20GB of art assets.

Let's not forget WoW remains the dominant themepark P2P MMORPG in China as in the West...

CCP games maintaining a separate Eve Online shard in China just on local subscriptions... 

Even Perfect World, the F2P bogeyman, continues to maintain a subscription version of its eponymous online game in China after 10 years.
 

As far as i know after talking to a lot of chinese mmorpg players, it seems WoW is pretty dead there. Other than some crazy achievement hunters and raid mongers, most core playerbase have left WoW for better ones. 

Albatroes

drivendawn said:

Lol, whatever man I am sure you will be saying that for the next 2 years and on and on. The forums are no worse than any other. They are under no obligation to release active numbers. It can be a double edged sword like blizzard is feeling now. Yeah and they have never said their total active accounts.

Not really seeing how Blizzard releasing sub numbers is a double-edged sword since they still have at least twice as many than most games with sub options. Sure, losing 8million subs sucks and people can poke at them for w/e reason, but what about the 5million they still have? Heck, can many games even say they at 13million in their entire lifespan? lol

Edit: SE did state they had 4 million accounts back in feb of this year. http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/topics/detail/24d3c419fae62ce2771b4b0b7d01c6348ab5d5e5

GeezerGamer

Good.  Less gold farmers.

danwest58

Considering this is coming from a known person who does nothing but bash FFXIV; I would discount anything this person has to say when it comes to FFXIV.  He hates the game and the only thing he wants to do is trash it.  It does not matter what is going.  

macwood

The fanboyism is strong in htis thread.

AriesTiger

Sad that a lot of gamers now require free games in order to play isn't it?

GeezerGamer

So, here's the real question.
What impact does the success or failure in the Chinese market have on my game?

Pratt2112

goboygo said:

Build a good enough game and you don't have to make excuses as to why people aren't playing it, I guess.

scorpex-x said:

drivendawn said:

scorpex-x said:

drivendawn said:

That's to bad. The game must be failing in general right? Scorpex-X was not here for months to bash and tell us all how the game is failing. However jumps at the first negative news. >.>

People ask how the Chinese version is doing here is the news on that, not my fault that it's not doing well.

Don't shoot the messenger driven!  If you don't like it don't look at it.

It doesn't bother me because thats just one country XIV is under performing in and you shoot yourself with your past on these forums. 

Well it bothers you because if it didn't you would of not replied, not once but twice so... it kinda did.

I have little interest in the game anymore, I totally gave up on it with the last lackluster expansion flopped out to the fanfare of a wet fart.   So I don't visit here much anymore, nor do many others though so that's not saying much.

Meanwhile, you're following news on the game, and taking the time to come post on the forums about it.

Little interest... Right.

"... the last lackluster expansion flopped out to the fanfare of a wet fart ..."

Meanwhile, in the real world, it's widely received high scores and praise by players, and reviewers.

It's not doing as well as SE had hoped in China. That's unfortunate, but they can take measures to try and improve that. Meanwhile, it's doing very well elsewhere (but I know, you'd rather not acknowledge that... 'cause narratives and all that)

danwest58

AriesTiger said:

Sad that a lot of gamers now require free games in order to play isn't it?

Yes it is.  And they come up with excuses why they cannot afford their games.  Yet in 1998 I could afford my own computer, my own internet, 2 UO accounts and their monthly subs, oh and I also played 10 to 20 games of hockey a week roller and floor which was anywhere from $50 to $100 a week, and I paid for a car and car insurance. And that was  with jobs like cooking pizzas, cutting lawns, cleaning the hockey rink I played at.  I cannot believe today's group of gamers because it's a joke how they cry they didn't have 

danwest58

macwood said:

The fanboyism is strong in htis thread.

Beats hating the world and all games and never being happy with Anything we play; then bitching endlessly on forums.  

Darkfalz89

Albatroes said:

drivendawn said:

Not really seeing how Blizzard releasing sub numbers is a double-edged sword since they still have at least twice as many than most games with sub options. Sure, losing 8million subs sucks and people can poke at them for w/e reason, but what about the 5million they still have? Heck, can many games even say they at 13million in their entire lifespan? lol

Edit: SE did state they had 4 million accounts back in feb of this year. http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/topics/detail/24d3c419fae62ce2771b4b0b7d01c6348ab5d5e5

As long as they are covering management costs then that's just more money in the coffer for the FFXIV dev team to maybe possibly make an actual PvP team and add more content besides fluff and content that 1/8th of the active population actually sees. As far as the 4 Million "accounts" comment was quite funny because of how quick Naoki changed it from 4 million "players" to "accounts made".