Thread: Final Fantasy XI 2.0

Originally Posted by Leonlionheart

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.

Originally Posted by Leonlionheart

Revamping FFXIV, which still has a chance and is not limited by a rather ... complete trash game engine is the better business choice.

Don't expect miracles, but expect more than you ever could with the limited abilities of FFXI's core

You did read the part where they said they were completely replacing FFXIV's graphics engine in 2.0 right?

Originally Posted by Leonlionheart

revamping an old investment that has payed for itself and has been dying at a steady rate for years and has a "technological cap" that won't allow furthering it greatly without a complete rewrite of the game engine

Again, they said they'd be replacing the graphics engine and server end software in FFXIV 2.0 They are literally developing a new game from the ground up and just reusing the same textures and models.

Originally Posted by Leonlionheart

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.

Originally Posted by Leonlionheart

L2Read

"not hugely successful" =/= not successful

it also had a rather bad release

@ Alhanelem also. So you guys are telling me it is better to re release a failed game vs re releasing a successful one? That makes so much sense, I guess that is why PS3 has so many HD remakes of PS2 games, why SE has re released every FF except for 7, 8, and 9. Yup re releasing XIV is a better idea then re releasing XI.

That's the right idea (@ Lionheart). The problem with investing the kind of money they've already invested in FFXIV is simply that they can't do a whole lot. The game's engine is proprietary, built for the ps2 (And the PC client to this day has some technical issues brought by incompatibilities with ps2 systems) and further butcherdly ported to the xbox version which has its own problems and some of the same limitations as the PS2.

To really do anything more than minor content updates to FFXI, they would have to drop support BOTH consoles. The game has a lot of players on consoles (mostly xbox now) and thus they would lose a lot of customers and probably not gain many new ones.

FFXI wasn't successful...?

Who says it wasn't successful? Doesn't mean that an engine overhaul and drop of console versions would make it more successful. It's an old game and it has been tried by many- many more than FFXIV and many more than a lot of MMOs. The potential new audience it could reach is not that large in my eyes.