Why I don't like the idea of paying for extra retainers.

[Djeserit]

Another thing is that we are having to pay because they are too cheap to pay for more server space out of the profits from the subscriptions. The game did better than they thought, well they should pony up more money, instead they are expecting us to do that, they are treating this like they don't want to spend money now, because they are expecting a good number of dropped subscriptions in the future, so the more they pay for now, it seems the more will be wasted when that does happen, and they only need the server space to accommodate what, 700k subs instead of one million.

You do realize that large companies set up budgets. If the CEO/board/rulingbodyofSE says they can only spend X amount of yen this year on servers, then their hands are tied and they have to plan ahead and make do with what they know they can spend.

Yes, the game did better than expected, but that doesn't mean that the dev teams budget has been increased proportionally yet. Next year/quarter/whatever time period SE's budget is planned ahead for, they will likely have a bigger chunk of the money they have already made.


Accordingly, paying for extra retainers = more money in future SE budget for XIV development = maybe dropping the retainer cost completely in the future.

[Merciless]

You do realize that large companies set up budgets. If the CEO of SE says they can only spend X amount of yen this year on servers, then their hands are tied and they have to plan ahead and make do with what they know they can spend.

Ya but if the game makes twice as much as you expected it to they you can probably adjust that budget.

[ReplicaX]

Ya but if the game makes twice as much as you expected it to they you can probably adjust that budget.

Easy to say when you aren't running the company and dealing with other projects and expenses that require funding. XIV has a internal roadmap to 3.0 planned out and they will always be adjusting the game's budget. Yet some forget all losses, layoffs and restructuring over the years they are trying to re-coop as well to please their shareholders. It's a double edged sword.

[WHS]

Easy to say when you aren't running the company and dealing with other projects and expenses that require funding. XIV has a internal roadmap to 3.0 planned out and they will always be adjusting the game's budget. Yet some forget all losses, layoffs and restructuring over the years they are trying to re-coop as well to please their shareholders. It's a double edged sword.

It's been said SE is a private held company with no shareholders.

[Felis]

It's been said SE is a private held company with no shareholders.

no extern investors
shareholders have every big company

[ReplicaX]

It's been said SE is a private held company with no shareholders.

http://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/ir/

You can view their financial reports as well for the losses.

[Mcshiggs]

You do realize that large companies set up budgets.

They do set up budgets, but they can make the decision to put more money in mid year or quarter if it is needed. If a company budgets to have 10k units onhand, but then gets a deal with a big retailer saying they need to have at least 20k units onhand at any time for orders, the company could change it's budget midstream in order to adapt to the changing marketplace. Yoshi keeps bringing up how successful WoW has been, and that a lot of XIV has been influenced by that game, well when WoW released, they realized they didn't have near the servers they needed because of it's success, they didn't charge their customers more, they put up the money and doubled their servers in what, like the first 3 months. Almost every issue that is brought up about this game they give just a few excuses for, RMTs, server space, or lack of time/manpower. Well 2 of those can be solved by SE throwing more money at the problems, don't have enough server space, buy more servers, don't have enough manpower, hire more people. They are just trying to hold out and find out how much the players are willing to put up with and still continue to pay. Which doesn't surprise me, that is really a bad way to treat customers, which fits with the history of SE customer service.