Money this game makes

Is a significant amount of it going back into the game itself? I don't like supporting square-enix's other constant live service failures if that isn't the case.

I think the patches speak for themselves: Yes, money is being reinvested. Now if they're worth it to you is another matter, and I recommend evaluating it based on that rather than speculating over SE's exact balance sheets. So!

Do you like FF14's content and updates? Do they feel worth the subscription + DLC costs to you?

If yes, then you can keep on going. If not, then you can always walk away. And it's not a permanent choice either - if you feel sometimes it's worth it and sometimes not, you can resub or unsub for those periods.

More data centers are being added. ARR MSQ is finally getting some much needed attention, while they're still keeping up with their standard schedule of updates. It's safe to say money is going back into the game.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

I think the patches speak for themselves: Yes, money is being reinvested. Now if they're worth it to you is another matter, and I recommend evaluating it based on that rather than speculating over SE's exact balance sheets. So!

Do you like FF14's content and updates? Do they feel worth the subscription + DLC costs to you?

If yes, then you can keep on going. If not, then you can always walk away. And it's not a permanent choice either - if you feel sometimes it's worth it and sometimes not, you can resub or unsub for those periods.

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I don't find an issue with 14's content, other than maybe wanting more dungeons, but that's besides the point.

Square-Enix keeps wasting millions of dollars trying to essentially get rich quick, but without the required effort, and I wouldn't feel good if the money I spend here isn't mainly supporting FF14. I think it's a valid concern, but maybe that's just me! Perhaps it's an overblown concern too, who knows!?

Most of it gets put into different games iirc.

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Originally Posted by EnigmaticDodo

Is a significant amount of it going back into the game itself? I don't like supporting square-enix's other constant live service failures if that isn't the case.

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You're not "supporting" anything;" you're paying for a live service. If you want to influence how SQEnix uses its money, buy some shares.

Raw entitlement and snark is another way to go, I guess.

The money is really going into Yoshi-P's giant money vault, which he likes to dive into Scrooge McDuck-style after enjoying a refreshing glass of fan tears.

I want to say that I've heard that whilst subscription and expansion profit is split amongst SE IPs as a whole, cash shop proceeds go directly back into XIV.

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Originally Posted by EnigmaticDodo

I don't find an issue with 14's content, other than maybe wanting more dungeons, but that's besides the point.

Square-Enix keeps wasting millions of dollars trying to essentially get rich quick, but without the required effort, and I wouldn't feel good if the money I spend here isn't mainly supporting FF14. I think it's a valid concern, but maybe that's just me! Perhaps it's an overblown concern too, who knows!?

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No company would put all it's single profits back into that single product. The money they make on FFXIV goes to the company as a whole.

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Originally Posted by Chie_M

I want to say that I've heard that whilst subscription and expansion profit is split amongst SE IPs as a whole, cash shop proceeds go directly back into XIV.

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This is why I don't feel bad about spending money there, I don't really want to think about how much I've spent on Fantasia alone but it's a rare exception where I am fine with it.

The thing players need to be realistic about is 15 million players or however many does not mean 15 million subs.

The money this game makes and the money people think it makes are 2 vastly different numbers.

This has a big effect on budgets and content etc.

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Originally Posted by Equitable_Remedy

You're not "supporting" anything;" you're paying for a live service. If you want to influence how SQEnix uses its money, buy some shares.

Raw entitlement and snark is another way to go, I guess.

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I don't feel entitled to anything, I was just asking a question. And it's snarky to call objective failures what they are? I'm talking their failed Marvel LS, Babylons fall being dead on arrival, and this Chocobo GP game now too. Sorry if you're in a bad mood!

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Originally Posted by Equitable_Remedy

You're not "supporting" anything;" you're paying for a live service. If you want to influence how SQEnix uses its money, buy some shares.

Raw entitlement and snark is another way to go, I guess.

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Uhm, you do know the person was just voicing a concern? Amazes me people still go after anyone really that voice any critique of SE when it involves ff14 or ff14 itself...

As with any company, profits go back into the company as a whole to be utilized for whatever endeavors the company wants to undertake. Some of it being more Final Fantasy 14.

Let's be real here: Profits from Final Fantasy 1 did not go into making more Final Fantasy 1.

If you want to specifically support 14, the devs HAVE made it clear that ALL profits made in the MogShop go back into the game directly (it has paid for additional housing wards in the past, for example). Keep in mind they didn't need to do this and indeed most DLC shops don't fund the core game.

This will sound counter intuitive, but my recommendation if you want to support FF14 as much as possible would be to get the cheapest plan (like the entry level, or the 6-month-at-a-time for the same price), then whatever money you might have spent on extra characters/retainers simply can be used on mogstation things. Or alternatively support the game via attending events.

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Originally Posted by EnigmaticDodo

Is a significant amount of it going back into the game itself? I don't like supporting square-enix's other constant live service failures if that isn't the case.

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No I can imagine that a majority of the money this game makes is dumped into the really crappy FF7 remake.

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Originally Posted by EnigmaticDodo

I don't find an issue with 14's content, other than maybe wanting more dungeons, but that's besides the point.

Square-Enix keeps wasting millions of dollars trying to essentially get rich quick, but without the required effort, and I wouldn't feel good if the money I spend here isn't mainly supporting FF14. I think it's a valid concern, but maybe that's just me! Perhaps it's an overblown concern too, who knows!?

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Hate to break it to you, the number of dungeons is the first thing FF14 team cut from the budget. You can look through the expansions and see with each expansion there are less dungeons.

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Originally Posted by Equitable_Remedy

You're not "supporting" anything;" you're paying for a live service. If you want to influence how SQEnix uses its money, buy some shares.

Raw entitlement and snark is another way to go, I guess.

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I don't believe his comment was entitled or snark. SE is not a very great company specially since they became SE. They funnel money from successful titles or projects in production and produce very bad games with it in the end. They have done this for years even when they were Square Soft. But your comment was that of a smart ass.

It's the same thing I mentioned in a Skirois thread regarding Square ever needing to 'apologize' for releasing too much content and the people screaming that FF14 makes boatloads of money hence boatloads of content and at a fast pace should be expected. We have no idea of what percentage of the revenue FF14 generates for Square Enix is compared to the amount of that money that is reinvested or set aside for FF14s budget. Is money going back into the game? Of course, money needs to be paid to the developers and staff, on marketing and other associated fees, etc. Now a 100% increase in revenue and profit from FF14 does not mean 100% increase, or even a proportional increase in budget allocated for FF14. For all we know over the last decades (barring big one time spends like expanding data centres with new servers, which was more due to chip and worldwide shortages as opposed to cost) the budget may have remained relatively static (seeing marginal increases year on year or simply adjusting budgets to account for inflation and fluctuations in currency value).

You would need to look at Square's yearly financial documents if you would want to know the exact numbers. It might seem logical that more money equals a bigger budget, but that's not how companies nor capitalism works. No company, no matter how good their product is, is ultimately out to make money for the company, for the investors and for their shareholders. They do what makes them money, and prioritise what makes them money, and if that so happens to be good for their customer base, well that's serendipity and a lucky accident. There is a good chance that FF14s budget has been increased due to it's explosive growth and increased revenue, but we have no idea how much, or how that correlates to the money they make. And if I would guess based on how corporations always act in their own best interests and those of their investors and shareholders, I would imagine they would try their hardest to give them the minimum budget they would need to continue to pump out content that makes increasing amounts of money, cause that's less expenses for the company, and thus more profit and revenue (and thus more expensive shares making investors, shareholders and board members all happy). That's capitalism for you, and unfortunately there is not much we can do about that.

Sadly no. It don't get more cash . They get new servers here and there but that's it. Any thing extra go to SE directly and support all the fail trash they do

Can't give you precise information sadly but as someone else mentioned I too have heard that the mogstation stuff goes directly into the game.

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Originally Posted by DragonFlyy

No company would put all it's single profits back into that single product. The money they make on FFXIV goes to the company as a whole.

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This. The truth is, we have no way of knowing how much of FFXIV's profits go directly back to funding the game, and Square Enix is never going to tell us. However, it's certainly not 100% of profits, and probably not even a majority of the profits.

I do get the sense that FFXIV is being seriously invested in and supported by the company though -- indeed, they'd be fools not to since FFXIV is an extremely profitable game and has the potential to remain that way for a long time. There are only a handful of games in the world that can still survive under the monthly subscription model, so simply having that alone is an insane amount of revenue even before cash shop purchases enter the picture. Square Enix has every reason to keep this a game that players want to remain subscribed to.

One of the strengths of FFXIV, I think, is that it has a strong and focused creative vision put into it, and devs that are personally invested and passionately committed to it. There comes a point where throwing more money at the game doesn't actually get more work done -- because, where does the money go? Either you just pay your workers more money for the same amount of labour (maybe they ought to, I dunno), or else you hire more and more staff and risk bloating the team to an unmanageable level. I guess the question is, can Yoshi-P and other senior devs manage more employees while still maintaining the creative standards they want to, or does everything become too big that it becomes the out-of-control development hell of FFXIII and FFXV?

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Originally Posted by kaynide

Let's be real here: Profits from Final Fantasy 1 did not go into making more Final Fantasy 1.

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Come on now, that's not a valid analogy and you know it. Every video game at the time was a physical, stand-alone product that had no way of being updated, patched, or expanded. Final Fantasy wasn't even an established series at that point, just an experimental game they didn't know would be a success or not. Making Final Fantasy II at all was as much "making more Final Fantasy 1" as anyone could have expected, so it shows the original game was profitable enough that Square saw fit to invest in more of "that," whatever they thought "that" was at the time.

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Originally Posted by Chie_M

I want to say that I've heard that whilst subscription and expansion profit is split amongst SE IPs as a whole, cash shop proceeds go directly back into XIV.

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I thought t was he other way around.
that the 14 team has final say about the game but the store is all SE.

Some of it but not all. And yes, your money spent on FF14 is used on other games.
But that's how company and products work...

Cash cows pays for new launch development.

Let me put it like this:
If they make so much money, how come they can't make no good games or have good customer service?

*insert Fresh Prince of Bell Air 4th wall break gif here*

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Originally Posted by Fyrebrand

Come on now, that's not a valid analogy and you know it. Every video game at the time was a physical, stand-alone product that had no way of being updated, patched, or expanded. Final Fantasy wasn't even an established series at that point, just an experimental game they didn't know would be a success or not. Making Final Fantasy II at all was as much "making more Final Fantasy 1" as anyone could have expected, so it shows the original game was profitable enough that Square saw fit to invest in more of "that," whatever they thought "that" was at the time.

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I don’t see how it isn’t. Even current gen MMOs don’t necessarily put all their money back into the game.

You think Hearthstone, Diablo 3 or the Warcraft movie weren’t paid for by WoW?
Even non-MMOs, like Ark Survival Evolved, pour their profits into other projects like a sequel and an animated series.

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Originally Posted by Nethereal

Most of it gets put into different games iirc.

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Which end up in failure.
How many negative rated games did they release in the recent years compared to positive rated games?

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Originally Posted by Chie_M

I want to say that I've heard that whilst subscription and expansion profit is split amongst SE IPs as a whole, cash shop proceeds go directly back into XIV.

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This is a myth people need to stop spreading out.

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Originally Posted by kaynide

I don’t see how it isn’t. Even current gen MMOs don’t necessarily money back into the game.

You think Hearthstone, Diablo 3 or the Warcraft movie weren’t paid for by WoW?

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Its probably get disseminated more than people think. Even though XIV(the green bar which is basically XI + XIV + DQX) is making money(and catching up) HD games and mobile games still bring in more. Unless something has changed behind the scenes the only money that comes back to the game 100% is the Item shop profits.


https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/i...es/slide09.jpg

Realistically there's no way to know where your money is going but it's a safe bet to assume it's being pooled and used where they please, that includes FFXIV but not exclusively.

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Originally Posted by kaynide

If you want to specifically support 14, the devs HAVE made it clear that ALL profits made in the MogShop go back into the game directly (it has paid for additional housing wards in the past, for example). Keep in mind they didn't need to do this and indeed most DLC shops don't fund the core game.

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FFXIV doesn't do this either, they just said they want to use the money to improve the game (and it has in some cases, wards, data centers and such), but they never said that all profits from the Mogstation go back into the game directly.

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Originally Posted by EnigmaticDodo

Is a significant amount of it going back into the game itself? I don't like supporting square-enix's other constant live service failures if that isn't the case.

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Then you would have to stop playing FFXIV. If that was an actual consideration of yours, then I would invite you take into heart that the only way the money you put into any particular product on the market goes to that single item is if the company makes just that one product. Your arm deodorant, toothpaste, and brand of soap may very well come from the same company that also makes items that you don't use; and possibly might even disapprove of. This is actually quite common as most people fall victim to advertisements, and don't research into the companies they buy their stuff from.

I would even go as far to say that the more money FFXIV makes, the more that goes into square's other projects. It has been mentioned that the money the cash shop makes all goes directly into FFXIV. While I can't recall anything official about that, I would wager a good chunk of savings on it being the case as that is usually how cash shops work because they are not supported by their parent companies.

That said, hopefully you can come to terms with whichever direction you decide to go.

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Originally Posted by Kranel_San

Which end up in failure.
How many negative rated games did they release in the recent years compared to positive rated games?

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too lazy to google.
Why don't you list them out xD

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Originally Posted by Thaciscokidd

Its probably get disseminated more than people think. Even though XIV(the green bar which is basically XI + XIV + DQX) is making money(and catching up) HD games and mobile games still bring in more. Unless something has changed behind the scenes the only money that comes back to the game 100% is the Item shop profits.


https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/i...es/slide09.jpg

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That’s a big thing; I don’t think people understand how much of the money MMOs make gets eaten to keep the game running. It’s not like offline games where you just have to sell and recoup development/ad costs. Once a certain number of offline sales are made, every additional sale is pure profit.

MMOs however, the cost to maintain the game constantly increases as the content within the game increases, yet the monthly fee remains the same.

There is some astounding lack of business knowledge in this thread. Every company on the planet funnels some level of funds back into new projects. FF14 wouldn't exist unless it was subsidized by SE's other games' profits. Are you going to complain about giving returns to shareholders or perhaps pay to staff next?

Most entertainment media including movies and games relies on like a 70/20/10 ratio, 70% of what they make will get a lackluster response and probably lose money, 20% will be successful and turn a decent profit, 10% will be the blockbusters that fuel the company future. Because it's entertainment and not an exact science you can't be sure of where the dice will fall until they do. Failure in entertainment is high, like restaurants, most go out of business and anyone who thinks this sort of business is 70% success is deranged. Sony Entertainment or Warner Bros or 20th CF will make far more dud movies than blockbusters.

Obviously all the money goes into the Yoshi-P sammich fund!

Jokes aside tho, am certain atleast a fraction gets reinvested into 14! ^^

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Originally Posted by Zaniel

There is some astounding lack of business knowledge in this thread. Every company on the planet funnels some level of funds back into new projects. FF14 wouldn't exist unless it was subsidized by SE's other games' profits. Are you going to complain about giving returns to shareholders or perhaps pay to staff next?

Most entertainment media including movies and games relies on like a 70/20/10 ratio, 70% of what they make will get a lackluster response and probably lose money, 20% will be successful and turn a decent profit, 10% will be the blockbusters that fuel the company future. Because it's entertainment and not an exact science you can't be sure of where the dice will fall until they do. Failure in entertainment is high, like restaurants, most go out of business and anyone who thinks this sort of business is 70% success is deranged. Sony Entertainment or Warner Bros or 20th CF will make far more dud movies than blockbusters.

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it's the conundrum of needing job experience to get an entry job xD
Wonder if they think a new project from scratch suddenly generates funds.
Except crowdfunding of course. Then again, that's basically preorders :p

I work in R&D; my department actually costs the company money on a day-to-day basis and requires funds generated by our sales team to function. It's only when we get a product to market that the company recoups the cost of our efforts. Game development works the exact same way; income from one project goes into the company pot to subsidize development of a follow-up product and/or an entirely new thing. Whether the new projects are profitable or not is irrelevant; the money's already been spent.

The fact that we're continuing to see new content releases in the game and expansion of hardware capabilities is clear proof that XIV's getting at least some of its money re-invested into it. I honestly hope that a fair portion of the profits eventually go into the development of a new FF MMO. Perhaps 10 years from now? I'm going to need a game to play during retirement. :D

This should help some understand where MMO revenue stands in the larger picture, from the last SE investor earnings webcast. Sometimes people have a flawed picture, or seem to think FFXIV is their most profitable adventure or something. But that doesn't mean it's not consistently being invested in for the next 10 years. Mobile games always rake it in for SE.

https://i.imgur.com/CguPPav.png

Given an average Yen to USD conversion of 100:1, that's an operating budget of roughly 494 million dollars for FY2022. For a business the size of SE, that doesn't seem like reasonable amount to me. Looking at the credits of XIV alone, they've got a LOT of people engaged in development, even if a number are contractors and not actual SE staff.

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Originally Posted by Zaniel

There is some astounding lack of business knowledge in this thread. Every company on the planet funnels some level of funds back into new projects. FF14 wouldn't exist unless it was subsidized by SE's other games' profits. Are you going to complain about giving returns to shareholders or perhaps pay to staff next?

Most entertainment media including movies and games relies on like a 70/20/10 ratio, 70% of what they make will get a lackluster response and probably lose money, 20% will be successful and turn a decent profit, 10% will be the blockbusters that fuel the company future. Because it's entertainment and not an exact science you can't be sure of where the dice will fall until they do. Failure in entertainment is high, like restaurants, most go out of business and anyone who thinks this sort of business is 70% success is deranged. Sony Entertainment or Warner Bros or 20th CF will make far more dud movies than blockbusters.

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I understand that profits from any product has to pay people and get used to create more games, etc. I'm just concerned, at this current time, about 14 getting to keep it's fair share to continue to drive ITS development. I would prefer they double down on something that has been a continued success over these objective failures they like to churn out. I guess my issue is with the current direction of Square more than anything.

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Originally Posted by EnigmaticDodo

I understand that profits from any product has to pay people and get used to create more games, etc. I'm just concerned, at this current time, about 14 getting to keep it's fair share to continue to drive ITS development. I would prefer they double down on something that has been a continued success over these objective failures they like to churn out. I guess my issue is with the current direction of Square more than anything.

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So, yeah, Babylon's Fall or whatever it was called looks awful and I'm also not keen on SE's enthusiasm for NFTs and so on.

Further, SE tends to have a cycle of running themselves into near bankruptcy before they figure out they need to come down from their ivory tower and make the games people want. In fact, that goes all the way back to the story of how the very first final fantasy was made, and FF14 has that story contained entirely within its own original release and then ARR too.

My suggestion: Buy the games that are good, don't buy the ones that aren't. Any time they get their heads too far up their own bums I just stop buying until they get good again. They do get the message eventually, they're just a very forgetful company, alas.

I'll preface this by saying that I agree it would be nice to see FF14 get a bigger budget and it does feel like in at least some aspects we are getting less content than we used to (regardless of how many power point slides they show).

I think there's a couple things to keep in mind here. First, even if FF14 did get a bigger slice of the pie, it wouldn't instantly translate into more content for FF14. SE could drop hundreds of millions of more dollars into Yoshida's lap tomorrow but he'd still have to go out and find the quality capable staff. They'd still have to train and onboard said staff. They'd still have to plan out and manage the content. They'd still have to actually create and test the content. Etc. It's not just a case of FF14 getting more money.

Second, as others have mentioned, it's a necessary business expense to put some if not most of the income from successful projects into other projects. Bear in mind that FF14 was one such failure not that long ago. It was a complete money pit that involved running a dead game while simultaneously developing a new one all while collecting no money from the people who were still playing the game. The game sucked up likely hundreds of millions of development dollars and many years of resources only be basically end up clogging up the office toilet. It was only through funding from other projects at the time that FF14 as we know it today exists.

Now, will Babylon's Fall or Chocobo GP be the next ARR? Probably not. Was Avengers a complete waste of time that should have stayed a single player game? Sure. Was there any way Balan Wonderland was going to be anything but a garbage fire? Yeah, I don't think there was any way to save that. But sometimes you do have to throw good money after bad.

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Originally Posted by StriderShinryu

I'll preface this by saying that I agree it would be nice to see FF14 get a bigger budget and it does feel like in at least some aspects we are getting less content than we used to (regardless of how many power point slides they show).

I think there's a couple things to keep in mind here. First, even if FF14 did get a bigger slice of the pie, it wouldn't instantly translate into more content for FF14. SE could drop hundreds of millions of more dollars into Yoshida's lap tomorrow but he'd still have to go out and find the quality capable staff. They'd still have to train and onboard said staff. They'd still have to plan out and manage the content. They'd still have to actually create and test the content. Etc. It's not just a case of FF14 getting more money.

Second, as others have mentioned, it's a necessary business expense to put some if not most of the income from successful projects into other projects. Bear in mind that FF14 was one such failure not that long ago. It was a complete money pit that involved running a dead game while simultaneously developing a new one all while collecting no money from the people who were still playing the game. The game sucked up likely hundreds of millions of development dollars and many years of resources only be basically end up clogging up the office toilet. It was only through funding from other projects at the time that FF14 as we know it today exists.

Now, will Babylon's Fall or Chocobo GP be the next ARR? Probably not. Was Avengers a complete waste of time that should have stayed a single player game? Sure. Was there any way Balan Wonderland was going to be anything but a garbage fire? Yeah, I don't think there was any way to save that. But sometimes you do have to throw good money after bad.

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But the type of experimentation also matters.

Balan Wonderland is utterly bizarre, and sometimes radical departures from established game designs end up really catching on. It didn't here, it's just weird, but I can respect them for at least taking some creative risks in this way.

Babylon's Fall is an experiment on how mediocrely Square can slap together some proven game mechanics and try to fleece us for as much money as possible... while investing as little as possible in a quality experience. That, along with whatever NFT abominations await us in the future, is much much worse.

I can understand not wanting to support a company pursuing category 2 there. But for me personally, I'll just buy the stuff that's good and pass on the suspiciously brown and smelly ones.