Full translation of Yoshi interview, including his openness to F2P

[Lyrinn]

There's a good reason politicians and leaders think the general public is stupid. This thread is evidence.

[odintius]

There's a good reason general public think the politicians and leaders is stupid. This thread is evidence.

Fixed it for you.

[Zell]

YoshiP views F2P the same way WoW does.

Wow had F2P for the first 20 levels. Why? Because you get the largest number of people to play. Nothing is larger than the word Free. Once they play, if the game is as amazing as you believe, you convert the free player into a P2P player.

I believe that's the hybrid he's talking about. Havn't you asked why Steam had a $15 sale? Amazon selling the game for $15. Free PS3 to PS4 transfer. Buy collectors edition of any system (PC or console) and you get all bonuses in the future.

For short sighted people, they think this is a sign the game is failing and they're desperately trying to get more players with "discounts" etc. The EXACT OPPOSITE is happening. The game is such a financial success that it completely changed SE from losing money in the last fiscal quarter to seeing substantial profits. The PS4 beta is a resounding success. It's about to release in China soon with alpha phase around the corner. YoshiP, two days ago said that about "500k" people log on EVERYDAY around the world. If you count how many people log on every other day, the number is "considerably higher." And for people who log on once a week, as so many claim, the number even higher than that.

So what have we learned? The game has a bare minimum of 500k subscribers. 1.8 million people have bought the game. In reality, the game probably has ~700-800k subscribers given all of the considerations I said above.

YoshiP doesn't want to make money on box sales like you get from other games (that's nice for initial releease, but horrible for after the game is released). He wants people who have never tried the game to try it. The next best thing to F2P or B2P is making the game so cheap to purchase that it expands his overall player base.

Every time there is a new patch, there is the potential to bring back any of the 1.8 million total players who are not subscribing. That base will increase by making the game cheap to buy with constant content updates. He doesn't want to limit the games potential by gating the game with a high purchase price.

This man knows what the hell he's doing. Unlike other games where going f2p is a last resort ot pay back pissed off investors who didn't get their anticipated ROI (return on investment), the decision to go partial f2p (if ever) by SE is the opposite reason. The game is SOO successful, that he wants to increase the total number of players who have an interest in the game by making it very easy to get into. SE is the ONLY other company that self finances an MMO and is not beholden to investors. Thus they can take a VERY LONG TERM approach that SWTOR could not. So for everyone who doesn't like the WoW comparision, it is the only other MMO that is practically identical in factors that you should model yourself after.

This is a long post by me, but i feel a lot of people in this thread arn't completely understanding the full dynamics of YoshiPs F2P talk. Context is everything.

[KaiKatzchen]

I'm against F2P, there has never been an F2P game that I played for more than a few months, and I seriously don't want to see that happen to FFXIV. Then again, some of the things that he said in that interview is making me loose faith in this game. I have been a big supporter since Alpha of 1.0 and was only hoping for the very best. Now I don't know how long I'll stay at this rate, but time and how the game progresses, will tell.

[Seif]

If this game ever goes free to play I'm out.
The amount of RMT/spam/bots is bad as it is, and with it being free, it'll be 100x worse.
No thanks lol

It's not just rmt the whole game design will be trash when f2p ruins it. They are all literally useless unplayable games. I never thought FF franchise would ever go to such lows.

[Synthesis]

Hm. If this game become F2P + in game cash shop aka p2 win. I m done with this.

The only one reason I am playing this becaue I hate F2P model and p2win thing. I don't pay to win.

[HeroSamson]

Here is the thing the game shouldn't go free to play its still new, How ever I believe FFXI should either go free to play or lower the monthly fee to 4.99 if they were to lower FFXI monthly I would play both at the same time.

Considering how FFXI has been around for years I would of expected a price drop or f2p model but they don't.

If they decided to drop price though on monthly to FFXI to what I said or around it I would play both but I don't wanna invest money into something I would only be playing sometimes when I am playing this.

[Ikeda]

Hmm... cause WoW is not a successful MMO or anything. Its not like the game still makes billions of dollars every year...Why would you ever try to take the good ideas from something that is successful and build off of it?

Because every single "new" mmo that has done that has crashed and burned. It's been 8-9 years of constant WoW clones failing one after the other. The only reason people still play WoW is they literally have no where else to go. Every braindead developer is still trying to copy WoW despite the countless failed mmos that tried to do just that. Why would someone want to play a clone of WoW that has less content than WoW?

On the subject of its "success" it has nothing to do with the game being good and everything to do with the time and way it was released. It introduced mmos to a massive untapped market that didn't know mmos existed. It's the same reason that the original Wii was so successful and why microsoft's been failing to cash in on that crowd with the kinect. The window has passed and that crowd moved on to smart phones and tablets. The people WoW brought into mmos now want something new but everyone's too scared to risk making anything new so they just play WoW or quit mmos altogether.

[Naunet]

Because every single "new" mmo that has done that has crashed and burned. It's been 8-9 years of constant WoW clones failing one after the other.

It could very easily be argued that though new MMOs have tried to copy WoW's game design, what led them to fail is that ultimately, they failed at their implementation. While they may have included the framework of WoW, almost universally their version of it was just not quite as good, whether it's because they missed a lot of QoL issues (a subject that Blizzard really does handle beautifully) or they fell flat on their face in making engaging content or they forgot all of the "side" content that's necessary for the longevity of a game. So it's not about just copying WoW and failing; it's about them trying to copy WoW and just doing a bad job of it. People go back to WoW because they try out a new MMO and think, "Well, I actually liked how Blizzard handled X better," or "Man, in WoW, they already solved Y problem." Most new MMOs have forgotten the "advance and improve" part of game development, which was and will be ultimately their downfall.

[Amberion]

Snip!

I think there are 3 main reasons for people going back to their old game.

1. It's just not as good.
2. Character attachment. That comes into play if the games are around the same level. Many casual games fail at giving people attachment to their character.
3. It's where your friends are. <-- Probably the most common.