PS2 and Xbox 360 FFXI shutdown

[Castanica]

FFXI sold quite well on Xbox 360 but the biggest problem is that the Japanese players hate playing games on PC. They are very much a console or nothing playerbase.

What do you expect player numbers to be like when the JP FFXI payerbase is decimated in March due to closure of service for Xbox and Ps2?

[Roja323]

Well JP has universally hated Xbox, xbox 360, and xbox one. So americans might have liked 11 on the xbox, but i doubt many jp bought it.

I think people way over estimate the numbers of people on ps2/xbox. If it was more than 5% of the total population i would be shocked.

[Castanica]

Well JP has universally hated Xbox, xbox 360, and xbox one. So americans might have liked 11 on the xbox, but i doubt many jp bought it.

I think people way over estimate the numbers of people on ps2/xbox. If it was more than 5% of the total population i would be shocked.

I think it's probably around 50 to 75% of the JP playerbase, keep in mind Square refused to stop support for PS2 because it was a big enough portion of players.

[Roja323]

Well the key here is "you think' vs 'i think'... to square a 5% player base could have been enough for them to justify not getting rid of it.

[bungiefanNA]

http://www.mmogames.com/gamearticles...mmo-mans-land/

Japanese people generally have a perception of PCs as a machine they use at work, not at home. Mobile phones for internet access, and consoles/arcades for games, are what they overwhelmingly use. Many JP PC game developers are small indie companies, like ZUN for Touhou, or the company that makes Melty Blood. Visual novels are a big thing on PC, but not much else. Japanese cell phones have been much more internet-capable than ours for years longer. Cell phone games were amazing there in the late 90s and early 2000s, before smartphones really became a thing here.

[Castanica]

Well the key here is "you think' vs 'i think'... to square a 5% player base could have been enough for them to justify not getting rid of it.

Well WoW refused to release in Japan because the pc mmo market was way too small. FFXIV sold almost laughably badly on PC compared to PS3.

[Alhanelem]

FFXI sold quite well on Xbox 360 but the biggest problem is that the Japanese players hate playing games on PC. They are very much a console or nothing playerbase.

What do you expect player numbers to be like when the JP FFXI payerbase is decimated in March due to closure of service for Xbox and Ps2?

Actually the portion of players on consoles (the ps2 much more so than the xbox) is much smaller than the PC population- Even in Japan at this point most likely. Either they're on PC or on a backwards compatible PS3 since it's hard to even find a fully functional PS2 with hard drive anymore. Pulling the plug on PS2 specifically probably results from earlier surveys they did gauging how many players are on PC vs PS2.

Also your assertion that Japanese gamers are all console or nothing is not nearly as true as you think it is. There are a number of popular MMOs and online games on PC that are successful over there. Probably most notable being Monster Hunter Frontier which has had something like 20 expansions over the years.

Well WoW refused to release in Japan because the pc mmo market was way too small.

It's more likely there was just not enough interest in the game itself.

[bungiefanNA]

In the US it's hard to find a HDD-compatible PS2 and a hard drive, because compatible PS2s were only made from 2000 until 2004, and HDDs were only distributed for 9 months in 2004, then the slim came out and they stopped restocking both. In Japan, they continued to make model 50000s and HDDs until at least 2010, and the HDD released in 2001. There is a much larger supply in circulation in Japan, and they had more games with support. Nobunaga's Ambition Online (A KOEI MMORPG that was on PC, PS2, PS3, and PS4 in Japan, and is still running) only shut down PS2 service in about 2011 or 2012, and added PS4 support within the past year or so. Supply of working systems in Japan is not a problem.

Part of WoW's issue is that localization of Western games into Japanese is still about as terrible as localization of Japanese games to English was in the SNES-era. The translations they get tend to get suck. Another issue is lack of appeal to the art style in their culture. Another issue is that MMORPG is not a widely-known term in Japan. Online games is the most specific the genre tends to get in popular knowledge. With such high population density, their culture has been able to keep arcades alive, and is used to being face-to-face with other players.

[Zeargi]

Personally, I'd just love for the game to get a digital download for the PS4 so other can continue to play it that way. FFXIV won't come to Xbox as long as they want their own servers, but people say the Phil Spencer is a decent person that cares about games. So if they move to have a joint venture in this again, the could also move FFXI to the Xbone. The console market is still alive for the time being. But those are just my feelings about it. I'll keep playing on my Xbox for as long as I can.

[bungiefanNA]

Porting the game to a more current console would require them to invest more resources. The last time they did it, the game was 4 years old, in 2006, not 13 years old, with most of the old devs still available for the port. DQX and FFXIV, both are younger games, and would be better to invest in porting.