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There are almost 300 Square Enix employees on Final Fantasy XIV excluding outsourcing

So how much of Eidos have a voice in the decision making process?
Because I'm sure there are some clever heads saying "Wow daddy-o, we need to stop spending all this money", right?
 

GavinGT

Banned
So how much of Eidos have a voice in the decision making process?
Because I'm sure there are some clever heads saying "Wow daddy-o, we need to stop spending all this money", right?

Eidos is too busy propping up the rest of the company to get involved in S-E's stupid Final Fantasy related decisions.
 

Buttons

Member
What are the current numbers of FFXIV, anyway? Does anyone know?

In a recent french interview it was stated that subscriptions more than doubled in the last two months or something. Probably tied to the Legacy campaign but speaking as someone who as payed since beta, currently the game is as full as I have ever seen it. Lots of new players coming in and lots of old ones coming back. :)
 

Jarnet87

Member
If they had just made 11 with better graphics or slight modifications like adding more western MMO elements (like were promised yet never showed up) Square Enix wouldn't be having this problem.

I wonder how big the team was for 11, that ended up being a huge money maker for the company right?
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
Welp.

I'd have thought someone from Eidos might have crossed over into management at SE, at least to represent Eidos, if not be somewhat involved in everything.
Well, Eidos has control of most of their external publishing these days, but Japan is still pretty much behind a wall where they warm themselves with money bonfires. :p
 

Forkball

Member
Damn fixing FFXIV is so easy.

1. Make it F2P
2. Charge people for cosmetic items like a moogle hat or Cloud's outfit
3. ????
4. Profit.
 

Foffy

Banned
300 people? Fuck, this game seems like it will still be considered a failure if FFXIV 2.0 is not the next World of Warcraft.

I was hoping the ambitions were being honed with a small time doing a lot of core staff at the company working on it all. Throwing a massive team seems like they're pouring money into a cruiser that has already taken on too much water..
 
This is fucking incredible. SE making good on their previous product despite the conditions of the MMO landscape and preconceptions instilled.

I hope they pull it off, it would be amazing to fill the FFXI shaped hole in our hearts.
 
Looks like XIV 2.0 is coming with a Verse demo disc!

I haven't played 14 but I like what I've seen of 2.0 so I'll give it a shot. The real shame here is teams like Tri-Ace. Seems like everyone in house is working on 14 so they pull Tri-Ace onto 13 and who knows onto Verses. Sucks because I could go for a Star Ocean or Valkyrie Profile right about now

Nice. So if I see a deal for like 10 bucks today, I can buy that and just wait till the release and be fine?

Do you still get the free month after 2.0 hits if you buy right now?
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
wow, that would be incredibly low. I was completely and utterly off with my estimates, whole different ballpark.

I'm pretty stunned right now.
What, this doesn't seem like a great project to throw what is likely their largest team ever at?
 
Remember that thread where they said the average salary in Japan for a game developer is $250K a year? What's 250,000 x 300? :O
 
D

Deleted member 20920

Unconfirmed Member
Looks like XIV 2.0 is coming with a Verse demo disc!

I haven't played 14 but I like what I've seen of 2.0 so I'll give it a shot. The real shame here is teams like Tri-Ace. Seems like everyone in house is working on 14 so they pull Tri-Ace onto 13 and who knows onto Verses. Sucks because I could go for a Star Ocean or Valkyrie Profile right about now



Do you still get the free month after 2.0 hits if you buy right now?

I think they're going to have a trial period for everyone who owns an account when 2.0 hits.
 

kenji

Member
Runescape did, and it worked for them good. That was their selling point. It costs so much to develop a game nowadays that pricing your game off the bat at $5 per month is just a really bad idea. It has to get massive to turn profit. I've wished for something similar, a cheaper subscription fee alternative. Maybe restrict your gameplay to a certain amount of hours per week.

Well, Runescape actually does go with that price point.

That said, I imagine the main issue is that you don't get 3x the subscribers with a $5 price over a $15 price, since you still have a subscription barrier.

I see, thanks
 

Taruranto

Member
Waste of money and people, at this point the name FFXIV is already tainted, they already fucked up.

All those people and they still can't make an account management page that is intuitive.

Too many people sometime can be counterproductive, especially when you don't have someone who knows how to coordinate staff members like SE.
 

Haunted

Member
What, this doesn't seem like a great project to throw what is likely their largest team ever at?
I am actually shaking my head in real life right now.

And not only that, but think of the opportunity costs! What the people and resources thrown at this game could have done in the 2 to 3 years where "new title releases have suffered" because of FFXIV getting all the resources and attention.


Good lord, the situation is actually, honestly, so much worse than I imagined.
 

Moobabe

Member
I am actually shaking my head in real life right now.

And not only that, but think of the opportunity costs! What the people and resources thrown at this game could have done in the 2 to 3 years where "new title releases have suffered" because of FFXIV getting all the resources and attention.


Good lord, the situation is actually, honestly, so much worse than I imagined.

If only they'd not launched an awful product in the first place.
 
Well they had to build from scratch a new MMO in 2 years while adding new features, patches and content to a existing one.

Is still surprising though.

Anyway I think the game could be fine if they reach FF XI numbers (500k) they probably expect more, but I don't think they will get more than 500k or something like that.
 
I am actually shaking my head in real life right now.

And not only that, but think of the opportunity costs! What the people and resources thrown at this game could have done in the 2 to 3 years where "new title releases have suffered" because of FFXIV getting all the resources and attention.


Good lord, the situation is actually, honestly, so much worse than I imagined.

Yeah, they could put those 300 guys on Versus instead. Maybe we could actually get the game within the next ten years that way.
 

Coldsnap

Member
^ Yea exactly. They update a ton of content for the current version of XIV. Past year I've been playing it I feel like once I have completed something another thing is patched in... and i play pretty hardcore too.
 

ampere

Member
Really shitting the bed with this one

1. Make failure of an MMO that disappoints everyone
2a. Realize mistake, can the thing
2b. Invest majority of the company's money into redoing it
3a. Possibly recover as a company with other sources of revenue
3b. Possibly go bankrupt when the MMO continues to be unsuccessful

I mean maybe they prove everyone wrong, but I don't think it's realistic at all to expect FFXIV to become profitable after how much of a flop it's initial release was.
 

Haunted

Member
Remember that thread where they said the average salary in Japan for a game developer is $250K a year? What's 250,000 x 300? :O
More than 60.000 x (15 x 12), I can tell you that much.

That said, the 250k number was actually only for the average S-E employee not the average Japanese employee, also actually 273k dollars, but probably skewed upwards because of some really well-earning execs and managers compared to programmers and designers.

That said, even a lower estimate 60.000 x 300 team salary would be more than the subscription money if we assume 60.000 active subscribers (maybe we should lower that estimate as well, from what I'm hearing...)


edit: this post is obviously a Milchmädchenrechnung just for fun, don't read too much into it. :p


Anyway I think the game could be fine if they reach FF XI numbers (500k) they probably expect more, but I don't think they will get more than 500k or something like that.
See, yes these are the kinds of numbers I honestly expected. I see the FFXI numbers so many years after release and think there will be a ton of people migrating over to FFXIV - and now I'm hearing five digit numbers of active subscriptions.

It's a real shock just how off I was in my head.
 
The latest trailer also mentioned the PS3 version. Do they plan to release that one simultaneously this time around?

Haven't been following PS3 development too much but I thought the plan all along was to use the 2.0 relaunch as the time to release the PS3 version. IIRC, the beta will be for both PC and PS3 and the launch should be simultaneous. Maybe someone who's been following more closely can clarify if I'm not correct.
 

Takuan

Member
The only thing surprising here is that an industry giant/leader could be that ignorant of market data. Maybe it's arrogance rather than ignorance.

I want them to stay in business because I want the FF universe to stay alive, so let's hope the game is as great as it looks to be.
 

Rockandrollclown

lookwhatyou'vedone
Too little too late I imagine. FFXIV v2.0 could be the second coming of Christ, but I won't even give it a second look, I'm still too pissed that they had the balls to think it was ok to charge people a full game price for FFXIV. I've never felt so much like my money was outright stolen as when I bought FFXIV.
 

zashga

Member
This level of investment is absolutely insane. Do they honestly believe they can recapture FF11's success if they just keep throwing more money on the fire? This game might have had a shot if they had kept it in the oven for another year and had some awareness of other games in the genre. The state of FF14 at launch (almost two years ago!) was a colossal embarrassment on so many levels. Most players who could've been interested in the game played it then and said, "no thanks."
 
lol failed investment.
If you need 300 people plus outsourcing after release something is wrong with the game and probably should have been delayed.
 

Wiseblade

Member
This just seems like poor decision making all round. 300 people is a lot, and they could be working and a few other games that don't have the toxic reputation of being the worst high profile MMO launch in recent history. 2.0 almost certainly isn't going to reach the level of success and profitability that the company hope/expect, especially with a subscription model.

I'd argue that the best choice would have been to switch to either switch to a free to play model, or scrap the whole thing entirely and try to repair the Final Fantasy brand by the "in case of emergency" seal on the FFVII remake or something.
 
lol failed investment.
If you need 300 people plus outsourcing after release something is wrong with the game and probably should have been delayed.

They already know it should have been delayed. How it managed to get released in the state it was in is still a mystery, but they can't undo it.

They made a commitment to their fans to make the game right and they've been on that path every since Yoshi-P came on board and shook things up. Maybe the current numbers are a little excessive but if they backed down from their promise, then they'd lose whatever faith their audience has in them.
 
lol failed investment.
If you need 300 people plus outsourcing after release something is wrong with the game and probably should have been delayed.
Probably should have been cancelled. They are in a 38 Studios situation. Good thing they don't have 38 Studio's money problems as well. They keep this up and they could though.
 
They already know it should have been delayed. How it managed to get released in the state it was in is still a mystery, but they can't undo it.

They made a commitment to their fans to make the game right and they've been on that path every since Yoshi-P came on board and shook things up. Maybe the current numbers are a little excessive but if they backed down from their promise, then they'd lose whatever faith their audience has in them.

I'm rooting for them. I was indifferent before but reading posts like yours makes you wanna root for them. A total failure with this could really dagger the company.
 
See, yes these are the kinds of numbers I honestly expected. I see the FFXI numbers so many years after release and think there will be a ton of people migrating over to FFXIV - and now I'm hearing five digit numbers of active subscriptions.

It's a real shock just how off I was in my head.

Yeah, if you didn't followed or played FF XIV that might be the impression. But kept in mind that the game was absolutly abysmal for months. They needed more than one year of changes and patches to make the game a decent experience.

There's a reason why they're making basically a new game. New engine, new servers, new online code, new world, new content. They'll kept things of course but if they renamed the game wouldn't be a bad idea.

NOW the game has chances of reaching FF XI numbers. But it will be pretty hard.
 

jondabomb

Member
Didn't The old republic pretty much show that the subscription model mmorpg is pretty much dead or atleast not successful enough to warrant using this many resources on a game.
 

Jarmel

Banned
They should have just ate the loss and closed the project rather than keeping pumping money into it. This is a textbook example of cutting your losses.
 

Rockandrollclown

lookwhatyou'vedone
Didn't The old republic pretty much show that the subscription model mmorpg is pretty much dead or atleast not successful enough to warrant using this many resources on a game.

It certainly doesn't help that the old republic isn't very good. I'm still not certain whether its that the sub model is dead, or if its just the fact that 90% of all MMOs are sub par WoW clones. Why pay for a crap clone when you can pay to play the real thing.
 
I just saw this thread and honestly I had no idea that this game came out in 20-fucking-10. I just read up on it and wow, this is one of the biggest clusterfucks in the history of high-profile games. In addition, I can't believe companies are STILL sinking money into MMOs, a genre that is basically dead except for WoW.

This game is so bad that they have basically disavowed knowledge of it. It's been out for two years, but somehow not a single song or mention of it was made in Theatrhythm, a game that is supposed to span the entire history of the mainline FF franchise.

Honestly, I never understood why FF XI was named FFXI. It shares nothing in common with the rest of the series, it's not even in the same genre. They should have called it Final Fantasy Online and this one should have been FF Online 2. Their insistence in making their FF MMOs part of the main FF series is going to drag the entire franchise's legacy into the grave eventually.
 
In addition, I can't believe companies are STILL sinking money into MMOs, a genre that is basically dead except for WoW.

You have to remember that many of these MMOs that recently came out or are in the future got greenlit like 4+ years ago when it wasn't a completely insane idea to dump 50 million into an MMO to try to get in on that WoW market. Some examples of this:

Amalur MMO started dev 4+ years ago
Secret World 6 years ago
Elder Scrolls online 4-5 (?) years ago
SWTOR 4-5 (?) years ago
Probably some others
 
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