only 500k subscribers?

worse than I thought if it's true

edited: one guy said on a Chinese forum at around mid-Jan that of all 41 Chinese FF14 servers, only 2 had over 1k active players, the rest all had less than 1k
he also mentioned in most of these servers the economy are in complete meltdown, nobody ever buys anything from the market
many other posts from different sources also pointed out the 'causes (such as SE's strict stance against RMT which is a norm in Chinese mmo culture)' of economical meltdowns and the existence of many "ghost servers"
based on the general impression from these posts, my guess is that Chinese FF14 service wouldn't have much more than 100k subscribers, if not less

well, these numbers do disappoint, but it also makes me less critical on SE... I no longer feel it justified pushing them on extra spendings such as expanding server capacity or staffing... I'm content that it doesn't go B2P like what ESO is about to turn into, or even F2P

let's just keep our fingers crossed and hope 3.0 can turn the table around

p.s. didn't want to provide the source because I wasn't sure whether people care, since nobody ever asked this question.
if you want source goto Willo_w's reply - also, don't forget to read all the way till the bottom before start yelling "it's outdated"

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Originally Posted by Willo_w

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trololol0101

Basic Internet etiquette: Don't make a factual claim without providing support. Not saying you're wrong - but support would be helpful (especially if it's recent news).

http://ano.lolcathost.org/thumbs//timthumb_php_0.jpg

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

Update is 20 days old but says source is SE themselves

Even if this is the case, 500k subs is still more than enough to fund the game and the xpacs to come. It's not wow popular but it doesn't need to be. People need to get over the whole concept that it takes millions of subs to keep something going. SoE has even less subs throughout all of it's mmos and still flourishes releasing new content constantly in all of them.

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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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That doesn't support the statement made above other than saying "the subs is under 1 million since 1 million is the sum of three games" not that FFXIV has 500k subs.

If however someone wanted to actually support what the user above said they could use this link instead.

Reddit Brancho Estimation

It's a study that used lodestone profiles with a listed criteria for determining activity. They put the estimate at 574,440 back in december. Which isn't as bad as what the OP listed, but not as good as we'd hope. That said they still make tons of money to continue supporting this game each month so there is no reason to be worried.

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Originally Posted by Tiggy

That doesn't support the statement made above other than saying "the subs is under 1 million since 1 million is the sum of three games" not that FFXIV has 500k subs.

If however someone wanted to actually support what the user above said they could use this link instead.

http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen...eased_another/

It's a study that used lodestone profiles with a listed criteria for determining activity. They put the estimate at 574,440 back in december. Which isn't as bad as what the OP listed, but not as good as we'd hope. That said they still make tons of money to continue supporting this game each month so there is no reason to be worried.

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Square Enix tells MCV that the actual number of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn paying subscribers sits at 500,000

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Originally Posted by Willo_w

Square Enix tells MCV that the actual number of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn paying subscribers sits at 500,000

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I didnt see that update. I read the article a month or so back when it was added and that is a new addition since then. That said it still has an interested disparity with the above numbers. I'd still wager square rounded down.

niche MMORPG for hipster gamers.

Also take into account that doesn't include china's numbers either

um, did i not provide a link which also provides a source that says ff14 paying subscribers sits at 500k?

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Originally Posted by get0_death_wcc

Also take into account that doesn't include china's numbers either

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That's because SE can't tell the difference between gil sellers and actual players from China.

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Updated: These MMO figures actually come from an original financial report that was filed on March 31st, 2014. Square Enix tells MCV that the actual number of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn paying subscribers sits at 500,000, with over 2.5m registered users. 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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So, yes 500k paying subscribers. Not including China. That's a lot of people that aren't included.

I just wanted to support the OP as his comment just got ridiculed. As long as I have enough people to play with and SE can continue providing me with a quality game, then i'm happy

What I really care about is whether or not a MMO is playable with its current subscriber base and FF14 ARR can be easily played with its current subscriber base.

Now if your looking at MMOs like Wildstar in which try to sell large scales raid, or when they were, they required probably a several hundred thousands if not a couple million players like WoW, during vanilla, to just keep such things going but when they had a subscriber base of only a few hundred thousand, that is a problem. FF14 ARR doesn't have anything that massive, so you don't need 10 million players to enjoy this game.

Back in the day, we only had several thousand players on Ragnarok and it was still awesomely enjoyable.

OP got ridiculed because his post came out in a negative manner. And did not include a source at that. So yeah.

and so what ? As far as I remember, that stills make FFXIV the second most played sub-based MMO on current market.

Well I certainly wish we had more players. I also tried to bring a few of my friends + leave positive reviews on websites and steam.
But I think this game would be playable with much much less players and that even 0.5M is a nice number for subscription based MMO. Lets hope that expansion will bring more players old and new.

OMG!! DA HORRA!!! ONRY 500K!!!

So how many paying subs do TOR and ESO currently have?

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Originally Posted by HumsterMKX

OMG!! DA HORRA!!! ONRY 500K!!!

So how many paying subs do TOR and ESO currently have?

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ESO is going F2P last I heard

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Originally Posted by Kuwagami

ESO is going F2P last I heard

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Cool something to do when im waiting for qeue to pop.

Quote:

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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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And they got their source from Polygon, which got their source since March of 2014...

since March of 2014

March of 2014

2014

PS: FFXI says "hi"

Quote:

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Updated: These MMO figures actually come from an original financial report that was filed on March 31st, 2014. Square Enix tells MCV that the actual number of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn paying subscribers sits at 500,000, with over 2.5m registered users. 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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Ok.. what the hell does pay by minute means..

Quote:

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Originally Posted by HumsterMKX

Ok.. what the hell does pay by minute means..

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Exactly what it sounds like? You buy game-time instead of 30 days subscription, you can then play for 8 hours or however much you bought until you have to pay again.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by HumsterMKX

Ok.. what the hell does pay by minute means..

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Probably exactly wat it sounds like which I personally would hate lol

Quote:

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Originally Posted by get0_death_wcc

Also take into account that doesn't include china's numbers either

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From Reddit posts and other websites, it seems SE dropped the ball and the game didn't do very well. Coupled with the fact they are currently on 2.1 (or 2.2?) which was a boring patch... sub numbers were low (hearsay here so take it as you wish). Here was the thread:

http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen...oing_in_china/

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Originally Posted by KodiHivaer

And they got their source from Polygon, which got their source since March of 2014...

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It was an update to investors by SE at the end of the year. As shitty as Polygon is, this isn't some old news, this was given to everyone for the year end update. Anyway, the 500K number seems true even now:

Quote:

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Updated: These MMO figures actually come from an original financial report that was filed on March 31st, 2014. Square Enix tells MCV that the actual number of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn paying subscribers sits at 500,000, with over 2.5m registered users. 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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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tiggy

That doesn't support the statement made above other than saying "the subs is under 1 million since 1 million is the sum of three games" not that FFXIV has 500k subs.

If however someone wanted to actually support what the user above said they could use this link instead.

Reddit Brancho Estimation

It's a study that used lodestone profiles with a listed criteria for determining activity. They put the estimate at 574,440 back in december. Which isn't as bad as what the OP listed, but not as good as we'd hope. That said they still make tons of money to continue supporting this game each month so there is no reason to be worried.

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This player also did their own estimation based on SE's investor reports.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ousing-and-gil

500K isn't bad if you focus on the long run, but they need to hook players in and have people invest into their characters. Otherwise they will leave onto the next great MMO. You can't count on the drops/rises of the "play only on patch/exp day" players that WoW counts on.

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Originally Posted by Accolade

Well XI is still very profitable, and that is speculated to have around 150k-200k subs.

http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxi/comment...ill_play_ffxi/

500k is fine.

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I'm sure the development costs of FFXI is nil by this point (relatively).

Well XI is still very profitable, and that is speculated to have around 150k-200k subs.

http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxi/comment...ill_play_ffxi/

500k is fine.

Great... pay by hour sounds like a cool idea actually.

Come to think of it, with the Korean version coming this year..

So you guys think we can actually bypass Fantaisa potions and alter our character's face ingame? Prermanently of course. (>_>...

500k is enough to make me queue just to login into behemoth lol

500k only sounds low because people compare it to WoW which is an anomaly, SE are still making millions per month in subs + cash shop and other things, game will be supported for many many years to come, just look at XI

Quote:

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Originally Posted by KodiHivaer

And they got their source from Polygon, which got their source since March of 2014...

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This guy has a point. Those numbers don't take into account most of 2014. That article isn't relevant to today's numbers. If anything it shows FFXIV has had a steady and slightly growing player base since then when compared to the other reddit threads that used lodestone to try and figure it out.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by HumsterMKX

Great... pay by hour sounds like a cool idea actually.

Come to think of it, with the Korean version coming this year..

So you guys think we can actually bypass Fantaisa potions and alter our character's face ingame? Prermanently of course. (>_>...

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No, it's not, check some of the old Korean MMOs and you'll see why (Aion, Lineage, Blade & Soul, etc).
Pay by minute is the most common subscription plan in South Korea, the games are extremely grindy either by repetition or RNG, the objective of course is making you pay and play the longest possible.
Imagine ATMAs with 10% de drop rate it originally had (not the new drop rates), or needing to do 50 books instead of 9, or even more common.....needind 100 jillion XP to get one level.

not sure how this matters. Even at 500k @ the minimum $9.99 legacy price thats roughly $5mil. Obviously you have R&D and other expense, but that is not including china anyway.

But even if the game had 10m subscribers, you would not be seeing 98% of them anyway. The game at its current level is fine.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by KodiHivaer

And they got their source from Polygon, which got their source since March of 2014...

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THIS!!! This guy is right!

Lol @ pay per minute / hour subscriptions. Thank god the NA population would vastly reject and boycott such a system. I would NEVER pay for that. How can people allow themselves to be ripped off by RNG / grindy gameplay while paying by the minute/hour??? I'm really confused at the stupidity of consumers... I mean the money making scheme is so obvious lol.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Elusana_Celah

Lol @ pay per minute / hour subscriptions. Thank god the NA population would vastly reject and boycott such a system. I would NEVER pay for that. How can people allow themselves to be ripped off by RNG / grindy gameplay while paying by the minute/hour??? I'm really confused at the stupidity of consumers... I mean the money making scheme is so obvious lol.

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Also the time spent in game with such payment model would be like second job. I highly doubt we would spent our times forming fat chocobosquare in Mordhona or dancing in Limsa Lominsa. :D
I have also heard that it is expensive AF.

Is it 500k "active" subscribers? if so, it's impressive.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Evangela

Is it 500k "active" subscribers? if so, it's impressive.

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Its definitely enough to make Famfrit, once a low population server, to see the "Queue in line screen" for the last 3 weeks or so.

500k is likely the correct current active-subscriber number. I agree that the 1,000,000 between FFXI, FFXIV and Dragon Quest X came from a fiscal year 14 report (fiscal year ending 3/31/14) and therefore should not be deemed a current figure.

However - see the update:

Updated: These MMO figures actually come from an original financial report that was filed on March 31st, 2014. Square Enix tells MCV that the actual number of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn paying subscribers sits at 500,000, with over 2.5m registered users. 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.

The 2.5M registered users is a current figure (there were less than 2.5M registered users at 3/31/14 as the PS4 version hadn't even been released). Therefore I think it's safe to assume that the 500k number is also a current figure.