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Square Enix, 65m profit fiscal year ending 03/2014
Nadia
Member UncommonPosts: 11,798
http://www.polygon.com/2014/5/12/5709080/square-enix-fiscal-results-2014
Square Enix confirmed profits of 6.5 billion yen (roughly $65 million) for this year's fiscal year ending March 31, 2014, according to the company's latest financial report.
The company reports net sales of 155,023 million yen, an increase of 4.8 percent from last year's total sales, in addition to a 10,543 million yen operating income compared to last year's 6,081 million yen operating loss.
Its digital entertainment sector, which includes the massively multiplayer game Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn saw net sales of 94,571 million yen, an increase of 5.7 percent compared to the same period last year.
Likewise, titles including Final Fantasy X/X-2 Remaster, Thief and Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition saw "Favourable sales," while Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn saw "favourable progress."
Square Enix adjusted its projected financial results for the year ending March 31, 2014 last week, with net sales and operating income expected to exceed its original forecast due to strong sales of Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn.
Square Enix reported a turnaround in February after a disastrous 2013 fiscal year and was producing positive results in the first three quarters of the company's 2014 fiscal year.
Earlier this month, Square Enix announced last month the total number of registered users for the reboot of 2010 MMO Final Fantasy 14 had exceeded 2 million worldwide. The game rolled out to PlayStation 3 and Windows PC last fall, followed by a PlayStation 4 release last month.
Comments
Remember back in the day when we used to play MMOs and discuss things inside said MMOs? I miss that... somewhere along the way we became more interested in earnings reports, stock prices, and the office politics of development studios.
It's very strange
I have to agree, As nice as it is to see a game I play and enjoy doing well, I m more interested in info on Frontlines pvp, personal housing, building your own airship, etc. etc.
It isn't strange at all. Earnings reports are one of the few places that we can see some truth. Not spun truth from the media or publisher themselves.
And yet WoW and EVE are still the only 2 MMOs whos developers announce actual subscription numbers, however accurate they are.
I long for the day that "registered accounts" get laughed at by the media, and not touted as some great feat in press releases.
Im glad it (and other games) sold well up to this point.....but im more curious about how many players are playing the game today, not how many may have dablled in it since launch or beta.
Taking a wild guess.... and considering that YoshiP two weeks ago said there are 500k unique logins for FFXIV a day, and if you count every two days, its considerably more than that...
The subscription for FFXIV is probably anywhere from 600k - 850k. That's pretty fantastic in today's market. Unlike F2P or B2P games now (GW2 and SWTOR), every single subscriber is a paying customer. You can play Guild Wars 2 and SWTOR without paying a cent. Those games may hve millions of players but that doesn't mean they're more financially successful.
FFXIV is 9 month after release and the news keeps getting better and better. We havn't seen a single "FFXIV is going free to play in X number of months" for a while.
I think the haters have given up on this one. It's staying P2P and it's bringing in a lot of revenue for SE.
Having to do guesstimate math to speculate on subscriber numbers is all well and good, im just saying that it would be awsome if MMO companies (aside form Blizz/CCP) announced actual subscribers numbers, and not "registered accounts" and things like that.
MMOs, more so than most other genres, depend a great deal on their active player numbers. Being happy knowing how many players have tried the game out at one point, instead of knowing how many currently play the game, is something I will never understand.
That's a bad idea, marketing wise. If they release subscription numbers, for example 500k. Many will say, the game has "mediocre" numbers. If a month later, the number is 510k, they'll say, the game has stalled and is on the decline, thus causing people not to buy or keep playing.
If they say they have 800k Subscribers ater 9 months, but the 10th month its' only 780k, they'll say the game is now declining. Even though, 700k+ is a freaking fantasic number, it will be compared to what it was the previous month (a higher number).
It's a no win situation. So long as the game has a lot of subcriptions and enough to make SE money. There is absolutely no reason to release sub numbers. You can't play the "WoW" game. It's a different time, and a different market. SWTOR says it has 2 million active players. Great for advertising but nothing for the bottom line. SWTOR is F2P.... 2 million =/ 2 million paying customers.
All i care about is that the game is doing financially well... so well that there is no fear it will ever go free to play and we're going ot get content updates for years. Not many P2P games can say the same that were released in the last 5 years.
Look at ESO? Does it look like it's going to remain P2P for years... we shall see, but doesn't look like it.
I get all of that, and mostly agree....but don't you think announcing "registered accounts" rather than actual player data is somewhat of an insault to your intelligance?
And your thing about SWTOR actually proves my point on what we should be seeing...they not only release active player numbers, but they also release financial data on their games division exactly how SE did.....so for SWTOR we know both how well the game is doing in terms of revenu generated (exactly like what SE revealed), PLUS we also know how many players are playing it...its a win/win situation, SE and others should follow suit.
I'm not just talking about FF here, im tlaking about every MMO out there not named WoW or EVE. Can you imagine if WoW listed 'registered accounts" in their quarterly statements? "WoW now with over 110 million registered accounts".... WoW haters would make the internet explode.
Anytime you reveal subscription numbers, it's automatically compared to WoW's 8 million+. SWTOR released numbers because of it's 2 million subscribers, only a small percentage actually subscribe or pay for services.
If SE released numbers saying 800k subscribers, vast majority of people don't care to actually see that SE is just as profitable as SWTOR. All they will see is 2 million vs. 800k. It's comparing apples (p2p) and oranges (F2p).
SE and FFXIV are doing great for 9 months. They know what they're doing in terms of advertising. Releasing subscription numbers and see it fluctuate creates a false narrative on whether hte game is doing well or not.
There is nothing to gain by releasing the numbers, only potential losses.
My 2 cents.
I agree 100%, but again though, my issue isnt necessarly that they arnt releasing sub numbers, my issue is that they releasing "registered accounts", and nothing else actually dictating the state of the playerbase. Its the same with ESO's "10 million beta testers", and GW2s "3 million boxes sold". If you arnt going to release sub/active player numbers, release finantials only, not some absolutly useless "registered accounts" in hopes of boositng your image with folks who arnt "in the know".
In my view, bragging about accounts created instead of sub numbers, is just as negative for people who know a thing or 2 about MMOs, as it would be for the general public who dont know any better and copare 800k to WoW.
TLDR: If you are not going to release sub/active player numbers, then just release your financial stats only and leave it at that.
We might see hard sub numbers after the China release. I believe I read that before then, they don't feel comfortable doing it.
Registered users doesn't mean anything when you don't have to buy anything. So for a game like XIV or GW2 that you have to purchase the box, it at least shows the sales. That's all that means though.
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The reason for this change is because office politics and the game's profitability now directly impact the future of the game.
Back when EQ1 and UO were big they didn't have much competition and their devs didn't have crazy expectations for their game; they just released what they could and kept the games going. Nowadays publishers will move resources away from an MMO if it isn't as successful as they hoped, even if it IS profitable. Hell NCSoft shut down CoX when it was still making them money!
The amount of content and features an MMO has added regularly is entirely dependent on how big a budget the dev team has and that budget is entirely dependent on the publisher giving them that money based on the game's financial performance. For a good current example see GW2. NCSoft has moved most of its resources away from that game since launch and it's barely above life support at the moment with balance patches every 6-9 months and new content being incredibly shallow, drawn out simply by a meta achievement to grind each month.
Fiscal reports are the best way to tell if an MMO has a future and currently FFXIV has a very bright future.