My continued support of FFXI, and SE as a company.

[Rinuko]

What a shocker.

[Ahalee]

What a shocker.

I dont think most people would actually.

[Alhanelem]

The deck is stacked in favor of MMOs as even a modestly successful one will earn more money over its lifetime than any non MMO will earn in sales. But at this point FFXIV has earned orders of magnitude more money than FFXI.

To be fair to the rest of the series, it would make more sense to look at sales. FFXI + all its expansions on all platforms (as each one is a sale) has probably outsold some of the earlier games but not more recent ones.

[Immortal]

The deck is stacked in favor of MMOs as even a modestly successful one will earn more money over its lifetime than any non MMO will earn in sales. But at this point FFXIV has earned orders of magnitude more money than FFXI.

To be fair to the rest of the series, it would make more sense to look at sales. FFXI + all its expansions on all platforms (as each one is a sale) has probably outsold some of the earlier games but not more recent ones.

Source? Don't forget that the reason XIV outpaced XI was also due to the massive amount of money they poured into XIV. Of Course it would end up outpacing XI in sales and revenue when they poured all their resources into promoting and updating it. XI has never received even a fraction of that budget XIV has, even during its prime.

[Alhanelem]

Yes money speaks, but only at the point of purchase

Every real person laying this game gives them money every month. Our money speaks long after the point of initial purchase.

Between the two MMOs, over two decades I've given SE thousands of dollars. multiply that by all the players who potentially become regulars- it's not an insignificant amount.

While the bots are a lot of free money for SE (and seemingly a reason they aren't in a big hurry to action them), so are the players.

Source? Don't forget that the reason XIV outpaced XI was also due to the massive amount of money they poured into XIV.

No source, it's my guesstimation. Money invested is also not important for this argument. Consider: let's just say FFXI and FFXIV sold the exact same number of copies initially. As Dawntrail releases, assuming similar player retention (in reality there is a big difference here because FFXI has drastically slowed content release compared to FFXIV), at this point their sales are equal. Each future expansion FFXIV releases (we know there will be at least one more for sure since they've already planned that far ahead, even if they don't invest in FFXIV's staying power to the level that Blizzard has in WoW) puts its sales ahead.

Look, I know we all want to give FFXI every advantage because its our beloved game (Yes, mine too), but we need to be honest with ourselves.

Also: Investment isn't a guarantee of success. Online games as we know them today were in their relative infancy when FFXI debuted- there's no guarantee that simply giving FFXI the budget they gave FFXIV would have produced the same sales numbers. It could have done better, it could have done worse. There's really no way to tell. At the time FFXI has begun to lose its luster in the eyes of at least some of the playerbase, it was still getting regular new content and a new expansion was still yet on the way- but the decline was already happening and SoA didn't really stave it off that much. Audolin technically has an airship landing, marked on the map like any of the others but it was never utilized, and some of its features got downsized when it wasn't as successful as hoped. And it is probably for this reason they started winding things down the way they did.

[Jordache]

Every real person laying this game gives them money every month. Our money speaks long after the point of initial purchase.
Between the two MMOs, over two decades I've given SE thousands of dollars. multiply that by all the players who potentially become regulars- it's not an insignificant amount.
While the bots are a lot of free money for SE (and seemingly a reason they aren't in a big hurry to action them), so are the players.

It doesn't matter how much you give them over time: it matters in the upfront investment stages because that is the most vulnerable money because: when they set out to make the game they have to make sure that the company is able to get all of the licenses for patent technology that they want to make, otherwise they don't get to make the game they want to make, duh.

They money you give them after the point of purchase, the subscription just goes into the big pile they created from making and selling the game in the first place, the SeeD-round of investments.

[Alhanelem]

I know a certain someone who responds often, and I would not even mind their input on this, as I'm genuinely curious where this information comes from.

I don't have data handy but the statement you referred to has always been screaming to me "wishful thinking."

First you can't really compare an MMO to a non MMO here, because MMOs make money continuously as long as they exist. So we can certainly compare FFXI to FFXIV here. I do not have any numbers to back it up, full honesty, but loosely based on the estimates I've seen I think FFXIV has had enough more players over its lifespan to have overtaken FFXI by now (i.e. in half the time or better).

FFXIV is still expanding as well, there are new servers coming with Dawntrail. Again, I do not have numbers, but FFXI was only modestly successful among other MMOs of the time (i.e. everquest and WoW). I just do not see any evidence to support these "highest grossing" claims, unless you only compare to the single player games which is unfair comparison because the income from those stops after a period of time.

The only thing that even comes close, is SE reports having over 25, 28, 30 million "players" except this number to me, only represents how many people have tried, and quit FFXIV, which is not a number I would like to tout.

you're correct here, they talk about the number of accounts, not just active users. For any MMO, not just FFXIV, active users (we'll say people who have played within a 30 day period) i'd estimate is somewhere between 10-20%, or between 3 and 6 mil of those 30+ million "players" on average. which seems reasonable given server capacities. if there were actually 30 million active users they'd need a lot more servers than they have now lol.

[Dihlyte]

if there were actually 30 million active users they'd need a lot more servers than they have now lol.

That is true, but to touch on your other statement, I was comparing XI to XIV.

The only statement that would be MMO to -notMMO- would be me quoting SE when they said FFXI was the most profitable Final Fantasy.

The only reason I stated that, was to show, it took from that time (2012) until 2021, nearly 2022, for XIV to surpass it.

Meaning, in my eyes, XIV is not crushing XI, let alone WoW as many like to believe.

It’s funny because even “Yoshida” said XIV will never come close to WoW.

The point here being, I just am curious where this idea comes from.

Sure “wishful thinking” but none of the numbers anywhere even come close.

I guess it’s just the lack of understanding, when SE reports those “total accounts registered” number and people just wanting to believe XIV is that popular.

I just struggle with the logic when all the facts say otherwise.

I guess it really doesn’t matter. I just find it personally, extremely odd behavior.

Although I suppose I can come off as odd, with my desire to create that mission guide.

[Immortal]

They cannibalized their own playerbase by flooding all their resources and budget into XIV and it being another final fantasy online game. Once it failed, they did it even more to revive it with ARR. If XI saw even a fraction of that budget, it would have been a lot better off that's for sure.

[Alhanelem]

They cannibalized their own playerbase by flooding all their resources and budget into XIV and it being another final fantasy online game. Once it failed, they did it even more to revive it with ARR. If XI saw even a fraction of that budget, it would have been a lot better off that's for sure.

They put the effort into reviving it because it would have tarnished the Final Fantasy brand massively to just leave it a dead and unplayable game. And it's for this reason that they don't simply shut down FFXI (well, that and they still get money from it, but they don't seem to want to allow core FF titles to become inacessible, which is a small credit to them compared to some companies).