only 500k subscribers?

wait, that means if we lose another 500k subs, that's 0.

0, folks, ZERO

that means goodnight and thanks for all the fish.

I'm perfectly happy with 500k subs. The game clearly won't be DYING anytime soon, so what's to worry about?

The age of "WoW numbers" is over. ARR has been out for about a year now, right? Most new MMOs would be THRILLED to have 500k subs, especially in an era when F2P is becoming the absolute norm because so many games cannot remain P2P and survive.

FFXIV is a winning product, bringing in $6.5 million every month because we know all of those 500k are paying customers instead of 3/4ths of them being F2P and buying nothing.

I laugh at people who think that the only way that an MMO is successful is if it has WoW's numbers at its peak (which was over 6,000,000 subscribers during Wrath of the Lich King). 500,000 is really about par of the course. It's the numbers that EverQuest had during its peak. Warhammer Online peaked at 500k subscribers early on. Dark Age of Camelot sits (or has) at around 100-200k. It's just that WoW is an outlier when it comes to subscriber numbers, that I don't think even Blizzard could mimic with a second MMO.

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Originally Posted by MasamuneBranford

Most companies have calendar tax years 12/31, others have fiscal year tax years of their picking. SE picked 3/31.

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Just to point out, SE did not "pick" 3/31. That's when the Japanese fiscal year ends-- theirs runs from April-March, unlike ours.

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Originally Posted by Willo_w

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/squar...ribers/0143457

Update is 20 days old but says source is SE themselves

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These numbers do not include the game's performance in China, which charges Chinese gamers on a per-minute pay model. A Realm Reborn will launch in Korea in 2015.

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10charszzzzzz

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Originally Posted by Lanceton

worse than I thought if it's true

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Maybe true, but Excalibur server is very populated, a friend cant join it at the moment, now that im doing atma weapon books ive seen lots of people in all the zones, so the game looks far from empty.

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Originally Posted by CYoung187

It's sad to see that the servers are empty and content has stopped getting released. I just can't take it that I don't play the most popular MMO, what are all the cool kids doing now?

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I don't know but we better find out!

P.S. Didn't we have a thread like this a month ago? Is this a monthly thing now?

To my knowlege, FFXIV is the only MMO available on current-gen consoles. While probably considered a "niche" game/genre, I think PS4 sales have impacted the playerbase. The PS4 had sales of about 4M by the end of March 2014. Recent numbers for the system put it at 18M and growing. If 1 out of every X PS4 owners bought (free trialed?) FFXIV since March of last year that's an increase, at least on tiral, of 14M/X players.*

X = 500 = 28K
X = 200 = 70K (0.5% adoption)
X = 100 = 140K (1% adoption)

*Anyone can speculate the adoption rate for FFXIV among the PS4 community, or how many of those were PS3 crossovers, but I think the growth of the PS4 can easily be counted as growth for the FFXIV playerbase.

You'll find that most people actually pay with game cards because they are generally cheaper... and im sure game cards don't count as a "sub"

500k is like...solid second or third-place contender by western MMO market standards. We're also in a pre-expansion slump, which tends to deflate numbers pretty considerably, and odd-number catch up patches are not really the most popular.

this is so silly, what are you comparing the numbers to, WoW? TERA? MapleStory?

There are so many other MMOs that strived to be a "WOW KILLER" (never going to happen) that are now either F2P or just dead. I think this game's willingness to stay within its borders has alot to do with its success.

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Originally Posted by Rekujin

You'll find that most people actually pay with game cards because they are generally cheaper... and im sure game cards don't count as a "sub"

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Not only that, but there are a lot of people who pay month-by-month and may skip a month between patches to save money. One of my friends took a break for a few months until NIN came out and now he's back and playing again.

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Updated: These MMO figures actually come from an original financial report that was filed on March 31st, 2014.

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OP, can you read the article before you start shitposting on these forums? kthanks.


Also OP, if we use the subreddit /r/ffxiv to gauge an estimation of the player base, http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/about/traffic/ has around 650k unique visitors each month... And I guarantee you more than half of the FFXIV community don't even use reddit. This game has way more than 500k players.

Considering both the FF brand name and the fact that it's on 3 separate platforms, while other WoW clone MMOs of its ilk that have gone F2P since then were PC only but still managed to get closer to the 1 mllion mark if not slightly surpassed it, I agree that 500k is pretty subpar. Although considering how badly 1.0 was received due to how badly it was rushed, it's no wonder 500k is considered a success.

That said it's still well within expectations and has enough subs to turn a decent profit, but only SE has the hard numbers and can see if subs go down or up to determine if the game is stable enough or if they should go for more aggressive monetization options aka. B2P or F2P. Especially because ARR was built with this in mind right from the start, unlike XI which would take far more resources to retrofit a cash shop and all it entails into its aging codebase, which is one of the main reasons it remains P2P to this day.

Wait a second, I'm sure the official FFXIV: Realm Reborn website said it had over 3M subscribers? I've not checked the website in quite a while, but I'm sure it had a banner that said so a couple of months back?

I'm unsure of where the OP is getting these claims.

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Originally Posted by Merylx

Wait a second, I'm sure the official FFXIV: Realm Reborn website said it had over 3M subscribers? I've not checked the website in quite a while, but I'm sure it had a banner that said so a couple of months back?

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Over 2.5 million "adventurers", which is PR fluff for accounts created. They never were active subs, which is also probably why they removed the banner since it was a bit misleading and I remember someone said they called them out on it on the JP forums.

Doesn't surprise me. While this game is good, I don't see it getting much bigger. It has a niche share of the market. Don't think it will ever get close to WoW's low numbers.

Nothing will ever get close to wow's low numbers. Any MMO developer who thinks it will is retarded

the reports on that article are from march 2014.

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Originally Posted by Roris

Over 2.5 million "adventurers", which is PR fluff for accounts created. They never were active subs, which is also probably why they removed the banner since it was a bit misleading and I remember someone said they called them out on it on the JP forums.

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Nevertheless, 500k sub is pretty decent. Although I thought it was well over 1M, 500k is extremely stable in my opinion and nothing to feel sorry about. That number could well increase when the expansion hits, as there's more promo + returning players, etc. I'm really happy about 500k. There's many MMO's that have came out in the last few years that have, for the most part, went immediately Free-to-play after a few months. FFXIV is doing pretty well.

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Originally Posted by Willo_w

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/squar...ribers/0143457

Update is 20 days old but says source is SE themselves

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Updated: These MMO figures actually come from an original financial report that was filed on March 31st, 2014.

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ten characters

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Originally Posted by sharazisspecial

Teso has like 50% or more more subs, like 700-900k but still considered failure. I recall SWTOR went f2p even with above 1mil subs.

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ESO's sub figures were never confirmed officially and I suspect at the time that guess was made ESO was probably closer to 400k.

I believe SWTOR was at 700k sub when it made the change.

As for FFXIV, 500k subs in a market that has become hostile to that payment model is pretty damned good.

The first EverQuest game lived and breathed for many, many years on about as many subscribers as FFXIV has now, and they didn't even have to compete with market saturation.
500k doesn't sound like a lot, but keep in mind how oversaturated the market is, and that games with more tend to be F2P models where they cant legitimately count anyone who has ever made an account and logged in ONCE "active."

Also TESO and SWTOR may have had that many subscribers at one time, but any analyst worth their salt would take a look at how many they LOST from one month to the next to project how the game would do. SWTOR, for example, is a great game to play for a single month til you beat it. Not so great to keep coming back to except for content updates.
FFXIV, meanwhile, may have fewer subscribers than SWTOR did at that time, but the numbers are likely very stable in comparison and the game itself actually works and works well (TESO and SWTOR both had more bugs than a new york apartment in summer) compounded with the fact that the development team's biggest gripe against them has been...housing prices and a cash shop.
And that's all I'll say about those two because they're not the topic here :P

Their team size seems pretty small based on what they said at fanfest so 500k doesn't seem like they are hurting that bad, and I see tons of Sleipnirs around, gold/platinum weddings are being sold and money from fantasia.

SE also doesn't feel the same pressures to repay third-party companies for the creation of the game. Sure, there are shareholders, but that's a different kind of relationship. SE and Blizzard are fortunate to have this kind of financial leverage with their games.

SE makes at least $6.5mil a month off of 500k paying subscribers, $78 mil a year with a minimum of 500k subscribers paying $12.99 a month. How much does it cost to run this game for a whole year including employees?

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Originally Posted by Arkista

SE makes at least $6.5mil a month off of 500k paying subscribers, $78 mil a year with a minimum of 500k subscribers paying $12.99 a month. How much does it cost to run this game for a whole year including employees?

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I am not sure, but what I am sure off is it should be less that 78 mil. Especially since FFXIV ARR team is small now.

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Originally Posted by Arkista

SE makes at least $6.5mil a month off of 500k paying subscribers, $78 mil a year with a minimum of 500k subscribers paying $12.99 a month. How much does it cost to run this game for a whole year including employees?

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Less seeing how a big % of the player base are legacy users where i only pay 9.99$ a month. For 8 char slots per world for 40 overall i can make. Pretty much i'm getting the 14.99$ payment for 9.99 a month.

AND if they have 500k+? who cares, i play on a very busy server and iknow there server who are even more busy then other.
I think XIV i still an succeeded mmo after Wow who been out longtime now.
Back in 2004 there was not many mmo to play and it was sort of a new era and ofc blizzard won a huge number of players.
Lets say wow start 2013 they would not have that number of active sub like they have today.
10 yeras has change game industry a lot.

I played Eve Online for ten years. Don't think it ever had more than 500,000 subscribers. And, it never mattered to me. I never had trouble finding players.

To be fair, SE had very low expectation in regards to ARR. With only a 2 yrs production and probably limited budget; it FAR exceeded the number of copies/sub to break even.

We are a niche community. Personally, if there are 500k people that love this game like I do, then I am so happy. I stopped caring about sub number many years ago. If you can find a good FC you are all set.

Need I post the emotional closing speech for launch? They didn't exactly expect as large of a player population as we have, probably didn't expect anywhere close to even 100k, so I'm quite sure they're still happy about anything above their initial predicted numbers and constantly remember that people come in and people leave.

Dem feelz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE9G3ByXKIE

The 500k number is from a report generated around/prior to March of 2014. The same number of active subscribers appears to have been stated in another interview as well... which was posted on March 08, 2014:

http://www.4gamer.net/games/139/G013991/20140307079/

Considering that it has been repeatedly mentioned in their financial reports since then that the FFXIV: ARR continues to be "making favorable progress", and compound that with all the heightened congestion we see as new content is added that seems to indicate marked increases in either new or returning players paying to play again (or combination of both)... it's pretty safe to expect the numbers are much larger now.

All I know is that the devs were more than surprised when 1 million people tried to jam their servers on launch day. 500k subs is probably a more than sustainable number for them, especially when this is paired up with the stuff they're selling in the cash shop.

I doubt they'd be having fanfests in three separate continents, continuing to push out continual updates or launching a new expansion if the game were in such a sorry state. They might lose some money on the China deal if it's truly not doing as well as reported, but the fact that I'm hitting a queue everyday I login is usually a good sign for the game's health.

As long as the game remains profitable nobody should have anything to worry about.

I'm sure somebody is going to run in and tell us this is why we need a cash shop though and somehow it covers the "Cost" of development.

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Originally Posted by Able

I played Eve Online for ten years. Don't think it ever had more than 500,000 subscribers. And, it never mattered to me. I never had trouble finding players.

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It hit more than 500k back in 2013, but they're also on the same server so there's that.

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Originally Posted by Edellis

Nothing will ever get close to wow's low numbers. Any MMO developer who thinks it will is retarded

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Why?
We've got like 20 mil. MMORPG gamers out there.
half of them, like 10 mil. is willing to pay subscription fees.

there will always be a market leader.
atm it's WoW. when WoW isn't anymore, then someone else will be market leader with the majority of MMORPG gamers.
i guess SE won't have objections to be market leader, but subscription numbers indicate that they won't.

to become market leader is surely a desirable goal.
which SE won't reach.

basically the scale is: not profitable > profitable > market leader
we are in the vast middle range of cost-efficient MMOs

Who cares? 500k is pretty darn good for this game and it will be profitable even if it drops to 300k. We all know that at one point in the game (mostly when you have the best gear possible to get without coil) only the real "diehards" will stay till there's a update that would really add a lot of things. It won't be weird if we'd have a few million people subscribed for the first few months of the expansion.

Do I am in an alive world filled by players? YES
Do I am able to do group content as duties and raids and all? YES
Do I like the game? YES
Do the Publisher's stock market prices affect my gaming life? NO, it surely will when game closes, but I cannot help it so why I have to care...