Quote Originally Posted by SessionZero View Post
Koji Fox said in the keynote at FanFest that Stormblood has triple the budget of Heavensward. Source: I was there, listening.
And do we have any source on how much of that increased budget was due to the cash shop? Assuming 700,000 subscribers (reasonably safe assumption based off of unofficial censuses), they should be making about $125 million USD off of subscriptions alone. That's 250 million USD revenue per 2 years (time per expansion). Take off 35 million, and that's still 215 million left over for expenses, salary and profit for the company.

It seems possible that the cash shop helped increase the budget, but it also seems possible that it hasn't. I'm pretty sure that the increased budget is probably due to less money being taken away from the FFXIV profits to fund FFXV development now than previously.