Thank you Matsui

[Alhanelem]

In their Japanese only census information released last year alongside the anniversary festivities, they revealed that they were operating at about 30% profit over expenses. For a game without a lot of large development costs on the horizon, that's a pretty safe margin.

If this is true it's worse than you think. Do you know how you get the approximate actual cost of something based on its MSRP? It's not perfect but it usually comes pretty close:

Just take the MSRP and divide it by 3. 1/3 the cost to make, 1/3 profit for the maker, 1/3 profit for the seller. Obviously it doesn't work out exactly like this but it's a good rough guideline. If SE's income is only 30% over the cost of the product, a non physical product (the subscription, to the end user), that's a fairly low margin.

[Pixela]

Inflation rises every year.
FFXI has not raised the sub fee since 2002.
Since Square is a big corporation they will be raising wages inline with inflation.
This means costs to run the game via wages have increased and the revenue has not.
In 2016? they addressed this with mog wardrobes and reasons to buy alt accounts, this linked with a lot of players returning worked pretty well and allowed them to argue for a 3 year funding cycle in 2020.

However Covid lockdowns caused inflation to explode out of control in every country they operate in, due to massive money printing.

This linked with a sudden drop in player numbers due to a certain PS launching probably lead to a panic reaction, thinking the drop in players was a sign of more player losses to come and that lead to this.

Also the 3 year funding cycle is ending in a few months, and will need to be renewed soon. So 3 things all happening at once caused this to happen.

The thing to keep in mind is the developers are mostly completely obvious what is going on in the community, and probably don't even know why player numbers suddenly dropped. All they knew is they were trying their best and 500-1k people suddenly unsubbed out of nowhere.

[Vyre]

Thanks for your hard work, Matsui. I hope you enjoy your next adventures outside of Vana'diel.

[Monsuta_Man]

/salute...................

[Vonima2]

Thank you for everything Matsui-san!

Fujito-san,
You are now responsible for dreams. Dreams we dream from our mog houses, from amongst the crafting stalls of those veteran crafters with dusty aprons and a hate for synergy fewell; from those fledgling adventurers, adventurer coupon still crisp in hand; from those counting the last number of alexandrine, metal slabs, or ancient coin collections left to meet the pinnacle of their job. Take this energy and let it give you imagination and the drive to keep Vanadiel expanding and the limitless potential this game brings to so many. Best of luck to you.

[Immortal]

Thank you Matsui, you did what you could. I really wish they would realize how much potential revenue this game can have, you could have two really successful MMOs if you put forth a respectable budget and expanded your services for this game. This news was not good and will have lasting effects, sadly... Lets try to keep hope and remember that this game has "died" before and worse than this because before they said "no major updates, maint mode" and we kept hanging in there and supporting the game and eventually got new stuff. Hopefully by some miracle they are able to get a budget approved after this year and we get stuff.

[ClownyCobalt]

Thank you Matsui!!! I'm a quite recent player and I've had so much fun with FFXI!!! It has so much lasting appeal, and I think that's in part because of the commitment to supporting the game all these years! It really is insane to imagine the dev teams having to work on PS2 Devkits to make content for a game in 2023? That really is quite the task I imagine! I don't blame many of the devs for wanting to work on more modern projects heh, coding is hard enough without dealing with such arcane technology!

Anyways I hope Fujito can carry Matsui's legacy! I'm sure he can as he's worked on the game for quite the while as well! I'm sure the game is in good hands!

[Rinuko]

To all the doom and gloom individuals, I wouldn't expect the game to shut down any time soon. We will see new stuff added and not just ambuscade rotation.
I can't imagine the game is that expensive for SE to operate given the running cost would be much lower than XIV. They already share engineers and developers between both projects.

Likely not a whole lot will change cause we get a new guy at the helm.

[Allestra]

Thank you Matsui!! ♥

[Teraniku]

Thank you for your hard work Matsui-san. m(. .)m