Originally Posted by
Pixela
Lets use South Park as an analogy to make a point
They created the show in 1997 and it's still putting out shows today and still making good money, they updated the creation tools but it still looks the same and is pretty much the same thing but new stories. If the animators working on it are bored or want to go make the terminator, they replace them with new staff that do want to work on it.
If South Park was owned by Square Enix, they would of canceled it and replaced with with a hyper realstic CGI series cause the "animators" (in reality it's managerial) were bored of the old style and are excited about CGI. It would cost 30 million dollars an episode, take 6 months per episode, everyone would hate it, each flower pot in the background would have 100 billion polygons, they would cancel it in a year after burning 120 million dollars while 10 people watched and then make a new CGI series that cost 40 million an episode and that would fail again.
This is how Square Enix operate, they are so fixated with novelty, new tech and new audiences that they don't understand you should always nurture success and audiences you already have.
FFXI is 20 years old ps2 game, guess what? The players aren't going anywhere anytime soon, new players are still joining (who like grind / long term / old school - hi2u runescape / aesthetic) and it has plenty of profit growth potential with expansions and merch. A lot of people would come back for 5-6 months for an expansion too, so it's not even just the expansion box price that would make money but the sub price from booster player numbers after too.
With investment FFXI could carry on another 20-30 years easily and be updated all that time, and make good money doing it.
All they need to do is invest money into dev tools so people can keep making content etc, it's not even comparatively expensive to do compared to everything else they throw money at. As long as they just try to re-create what they NEED.
It does not matter if it's 20 year old tech if people like it and will pay to play it, also the devs want to keep working on it because they are XI fans and have stated they only got into game dev becasue they loved XI and wanted to work on it.
The entire problem is management.
They have burned money on countless games over the past few years that quickly died, and damaged their brand in the process as completely chaotic company. If they spent a fraction of that on XI dev tools it would of been guaranteed profits for the next 20+ years and it would be amazing PR to rebuild faith and love in the company.
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Again the same thing is going to (and actually already is) happening with XIV where they are getting itchy feet and want to work on the newest AAA single player devil may cry clone.
The only reason they are still in business at all is because they have a loyal fanbase that keep bailing them out of every hole they jump into, but that are slowly getting sick and tired of their antics.
Everyone I know that used to be a Square Enix fan is now a fan of a specific thing they run, and hate the company. That is not good.
Most companies understand the value of a loyal fanbase and niche products, Square Enix understand nothing but chasing pretty butterflies.
They are running XI into the ground.
They are doing the same thing with XIV.
They ruined FF7 R in so many ways.
FF16 looks like a complete mess of mashed together ideas that will end up appealing to barely anyone.
I mean really.
TLDR: If people still like Chess, make more Chess boards and don't try make super intergalatic blackhole 4d chOss'.
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