http://www.vg247.com/2012/11/19/fin...ptions-to-regain-trust-of-fans-says-director/
Mod Edit: There was some confusion about a mistranslate(?) earlier in the article but it has since been fixed.
It looks like Square Enix is defiant to the very end.
Yoshida replied, “The main reason why we haven’t decided to take the free-to-play option is that, at the game’s original launch, it didn’t live up to expectations and it let down a lot of fans. We lost the trust of fans who had followed us across our 25-year history. We want to regain that trust and to deliver on past promises."
“One of the promises we originally stated was that we would release the game with a subscription model. Players will be able to play it 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days in the year if they paid a subscription fee."
“So to regain the trust of our players we must of course fulfil this promise. Right now we believe that to be more important than any kind of business decision.”
Mod Edit: There was some confusion about a mistranslate(?) earlier in the article but it has since been fixed.
“The last thing is that our aim is to make an MMO,” Yoshida continued, “and a lot of companies do their development for MMOs by getting money from investors. Then the investors want their money back, so if the game doesn’t make enough money or doesn’t have enough users, then what do we do?
“We’d have to pay our investors back, and free-to-play is an option to get that money back to investors quickly. Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn is a product that is independent to Square-Enix. All of the money’s coming from us, so we had more time to put it into what we wanted to do. We’re not in a rush to pay anyone back.”
VG247 said:Dave Cook
19/11/12, 3:16 pm
@12 Yeah that does make sense. At any rate it’s been edited out. That’s how it was said on the recording, although it was a translated chat, and in this context it’s wrong.
It looks like Square Enix is defiant to the very end.