Can someone clarify this " less than 1mill subs"

[Mature]

Polygon at it. Can somone just clarify this. I can\\'t believe this game got less than 1 million active users

http://www.polygon.com/2015/1/2/7480177/square-enix-final-fantasy-14-final-fantasy-11-dragon-quest-10-subscribers

Three major MMO titles - Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn which began operation last August, Dragon Quest 10, which was launched in August 2012, and Final Fantasy 11, which has entered its thirteenth year of operation-maintain nearly 1,000,000 paying subscribers all together, and have established a solid revenue base," reads a statement from president and representative director Yosuke Matsuda.

In 2013, Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn reached more than 1.5 million registered users worldwide; however, at the time it was still unclear how many of those 1.5 million users are actively playing the game, as opposed to those who registered in its previous life.

[Miitan]

This is for the 2013-2014 fiscal year.

[Ghishlain]

Read the article in full, that quote was from a financial report that was made for March 31, 2014. The numbers have most certainly changed significantly since then thanks to more exposure and the release of Chinese servers.

How they've exactly changed? Who's to say but S-E themselves.

[Exodus-E]

Note the (recent) change in the title: it's based on a report from March 31, 2014.

So yeah...bad journalism at its finest.

[xnonamex]

You do understand that FFXIV is what you would be able to relatively call a niche MMORPG? Most of the ppl that i know and who are in gaming haven't even heard about it.
Still if you consider that they have 1mil subscribers across all these games. Let's say even if 1/3 is FFXIV. so ~330k. each paying 10+eur per month so they get nearly 4mil euros per month from the game(+original games sales +cash shop). Ofc that is not all clean profit as there are development expenses and server maintenance etc. But i imagine they still make sweet money out of it.

And yeah. at the end of the source it says its relatively old news.

[Rose-Wild]

If you think this game has 1 mil active accounts you are fooling yourself.

[Elazu]

Note the (recent) change in the title: it's based on a report from March 31, 2014.

So yeah...bad journalism at its finest.

Just Polygon being Polygon.

[Roris]

I like how they just now published numbers for a year that ended in March last year, hence they're really 2013 numbers, typical SE doing things all backwards, if anything it's bad investor reporting though Polygon are equally bad on their own. Anyway, I doubt the numbers will massively change at all, it's no surprise the game doesn't have nearly close to 1 million real subs as some people have already guesstimated how many actual active subs the game has, the 2.5 million "adventurers" numbers was always just PR spin on registered accounts.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...eased_another/

The cash shop is the perfect sign of this, usually when WoW clone MMOs such as ARR start under performing and not retaining enough subs, they push the F2P cash shop panic button. No, this game will never ever pull a WoW and maintain both a cash shop and a sub for an extended period of time i.e. more than a year, it's really silly to believe that.

[Deathscythe343]

Note the (recent) change in the title: it's based on a report from March 31, 2014.

So yeah...bad journalism at its finest.

Not necessarily. Their article might have just used the last known published numbers for the game. Yes, those numbers could be more or less.

[ShiloEET]

The cash shop is the perfect sign of this, usually when WoW clone MMOs such as ARR start under performing and not retaining enough subs, they push the F2P cash shop panic button. No, this game will never ever pull a WoW and maintain both a cash shop and a sub for an extended period of time i.e. more than a year, it's really silly to believe that.

I don't think square enix is willing to make their games f2p again. BEcause ff14 failed when it went f2p.