Gamasutra Interview with Yoshi-P and Sage Sundi

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/featur...y_xiv_the_.php

Enjoy, It has some great insight into the games developer and some great quotes.

He actually only stated the obvious

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Very often you'll hear developers in the West say that you can't recover from a bad launch. Obviously, that's not your philosophy, but I was wondering what your thoughts on that belief are?

NY: One of the reasons I believe that it's very hard to recover from a bad launch is that with many Western MMOs, because the teams are so large and they require such a large budget -- because of all the assets and all the things they have to make -- a lot of those projects rely on investment, and it can't be done by a single company alone. So, that's why if you fail, then you fail.

And then when a game, like a large Western MMO, has a large launch and it fails, then the investors start to pull back. Then the money stops flowing. And when the money stops flowing, the development teams have to make their development team sizes smaller, which means they can't get enough content for the fixes, or they have to go to a different payment model like free-to-play.

Basically the control of the development is crushed. They want to change it, they want to start over, but it's prevented by that lack of the budget.

On the other hand, with FFXIV, operations and development are all funded 100 percent by Square Enix, so as long as we decide to continue backing the project and we don't give up, we can continue to provide things to the players, see what they want, then go back and retry things, redo things. Basically, it comes up to us. We're not at the strings of the investors.

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Well this part was certainly interesting.

3 months to get all the stuff out in producer's letters I and III. From February to early May. However, due to earthquake it's probably 3 months +2 weeks.

I like that he's a bit cocky with what he's saying. Fuck the investors, we've got the ball.

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Originally Posted by Chrees

Well this part was certainly interesting.

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Very interesting indeed.

Were this actually true, I think we can toss out that reason as to why the game was released when it was.

I find that I'm aligned with the Japanese playerbase he's describing. I just want info on what's happening and when for the most part.

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Originally Posted by Malakhim

Very interesting indeed.

Were this actually true, I think we can toss out that reason as to why the game was released when it was.

I find that I'm aligned with the Japanese playerbase he's describing. I just want info on what's happening and when for the most part.

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Which leaves only one answer.....

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WADAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Extremely insightful! It's like the veil has been lifted and we can have intelligent discourse about things. I'm honestly glad that this information is out there!

When he says "Technology Trouble" in the first question I wonder if he'll try to fine tune the system so it isn't so demanding on resources.

it's sanitized PR, did you expect the "I'll be truthful with you" approach?

It's a good read, and hints just enough to be interesting. That's the best we're going to get in front of the PR shield. Take what you can get.

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Originally Posted by Corrderio

When he says "Technology Trouble" in the first question I wonder if he'll try to fine tune the system so it isn't so demanding on resources.

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Betting it has more to do with the particular engine than anything.