Quote Originally Posted by Rydin View Post
1. At that time (FFXI launch) MMO's were still pretty niche and nerdy... Everquest players were still considered basement nerds... Today that is far from the case. From WoW to farmville, people have accepted online gaming as a viable gaming genre

2. FFXI required additional hardware... I can't think of any of my friends that had the PS2 hard drive.... the PS3 comes standard with one

3. XBox live, playstation network, netflix and gamefly have gotten people more accustomed to paying for online services... a lot more than they were 8 years ago

4. I don't think it is crazy to think that 1/6th of the people that bought FFXIII will try FFXIV.... 1 out of every 6.... that is definitely not a stretch

5. There is no MMORPG on PS3 other than DCUO....

6. WoW did 12 million with no Japanese players....

7. Monster hunter is HUGE in japan.... Japanese players want this... very badly, they want this game to succeed

8. People love a good train wreck... people will drop the money on the game just to see what all the fuss is about... I'm not saying they'll stay after the free month... but they'll get it

Need I go on?

Edit: Lawyered!
According to This site only 3 mmos have over 1 million subs, if everyone and thier mother wanted to play mmos now, then this would not be true. The fact is mmos still arent as popular as single player games because of the commitment you need to play them. Yes WoW got 12 million subscriptions but that is one game not the whole industry, WoW is probably about 1% of the gaming market.

Oh and yes the ps2 version required additional hardware, but you could fix that getting the PC version, which ran on buget laptops since the NA release of it.