Quote Originally Posted by Vhailor View Post
What "growth standards" would you argue are necessary?
FFXIV has to grow revenues/sales/profits at a reliable rate YoY. For a sub-based model, this can only be measured through box sales, subscriber-base, and retention rates. Box sales are obviously the least important after initial release. You are right in that the raw revenue of subs is probably enough to cover an expansion. But we have to consider a cpl of things:

How much did it cost to get those subs? Whats the net profit? How much of that profit can be reinvested and how? We also have to consider how many subs we lost over the specified period of time. Finally we need to make sure that the money reinvested will not only improve customer retention (as you said), but also pull in more subscribers (to make up for lost ones).

A cash shop alleviates the pressure on an expansion to do well. Its cheap content to produce, and generates revenue w/o having to find new subscribers.