Final Fantasy XI 2.0

[svengalis]

L2Read

"not hugely successful" =/= not successful

it also had a rather bad release

But when MMOs were new to market and having 500k paying subscribers is very successful for an MMO.

[svengalis]

Rift's launch month had 1million subscribers.

FFXI also got very poor reviews

1 million paying subscribers? Again FF XI when it launched in Japan 9 years ago was a new thing. MMOs had not penetrated the market like they do today. When FF XI hit stateside it got good reviews as the game got better and had released its first exspansion. It came a long way in that year and 6 months after it launched in japan.

[Leonlionheart]

reviews and success aside

ps2 limitations will forever fuck this game

[Alhanelem]

They could do what they are doing for XIV and do it to XI instead,

It would not have anywhere near the same effect for a dated, well known, 8+ year old game that it would have for a <1 year old game that most people passed up and ignored because of a bad launch.

You're just crazy if you think investing the amount of money they've invested in XIV to upgrade FFXI would generate a good return on the investment. There's no way it could work short of calling it something other than Final Fantasy XI and having everything "coincidentally" be exactly the same but prettier looking.

It came a long way in that year

FFXIV has come a long way in a year too. That being said, the finickier gamers of today aren't taking notice and just blasting it on the basis of the weak launch, as if there's no way it could have improved in this time.

[Neisan_Quetz]

The difference being XI came a long way and was successful. 14 improved... and only 30k people are playing it.

For free.

It's going to take an entire overhaul just for XIV to have any hope of staying afloat.

[Swords]

Eh, subscriber numbers arn't exactly the best thing to use for an argument when it comes to deciding which MMO's are hits or not. For starters most every MMO has a high subscriber rate at launch, not because the games any good but because people just want to check it out. Second, some people quit playing yet still pay for their account, because they don't want to lose their character in case they decide to come back one day. Third you also have to consider how many of those subscribers are mules, craft/gatering bots, RMT, etc. Each of these inflate the subscriber rate exponentially, which is why I always laugh when I see "Over 6 million subscribers" on copies of WoW.

Anyways, if people want to talk on the subject of cutting their losses I'd love to see what people have to say about why Sony didn't just cut their losses when the PS3 bombed harder than FFXIV at launch. I mean they've revised the system like 8 times in the last 5 years dumbing it down to make it more affordable, and now they're just starting to make profit on it.

[Neisan_Quetz]

EDIT: post responding to edited

Of course, bringing up 'mules, craft/gathering bots, RMT, etc.' doesn't help 14's case any bit either

PS3 was a case of Sony not realizing people actually do like playing with each other imo, hence the Wii which has the weakest system in terms of performance was the most purchased next gen console.

[Alhanelem]

Even if it wasn't FFXIV, i'd rather them have dropped the development cost of the game on some other new title, than a overaul to FFXI. From a business standpoint a new product makes way more sense.

[Yugl]

Psychological reason: When you make grand investments into projects and they don't pay off, you're less likely to abandon them than if you invested less.

Business reason: SE had planned this from the beginning. They are not psychic; they cannot tell what players want, generically, from an MMO (Generically does not mean "Hey, give me WAR buffs!"). They allowed players, without monthly fees, to play the game and find flaws with the system. SE acted accordingly. The whole process is to release half a product and then gradually build the rest of the product up with the help of the player base. It's similar to hiring a group of players to develop the game alongside the development team, but is cheaper and avoids psychological biases that might emerge had the players been paid. Consequently, once SE feels they have adequately understood what their game needs, they are able to begin charging players (Build revenue) with the promise of enhanced gameplay (Prevents people from leaving).

[Runespider]

Square aren't working on these games in terms of strict business sense, it's all about saving face. FFXIV failed and they can't accept it, FFXI is going fine..thats why they are throwing money at a cripple of a game.

If it fails again which it probably will, they will be a complete laughing stock and I'm not sure how they will take that, maybe throw even more money at it and just keep on failing (sometimes you gotta know when to throw in the towel). Regardless FFXI is going to lose out in all this from the massive under-investment that is clearly seen.