Steam payment HUGE price increase!

[Rikos]

I would like you all to go this page please

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-for-BR-and-RU

[Appeal to Square Enix regarding subscription prices for BR and RU]

[Vizu00]

While I would love to just go with what you're saying, since it would fall perfectly with my objectives, please give us some sources on that or else it will only sound like noise to most people.

Thanks in advance!

As pointed by Valkyrie_Lenneth I incorrectly assumed that the game have 6M subscribers while that number is probably closer to 800k-1M thus this calculation is wrong. While I haven't spent much time calculating the real result should be closer to this

200 - 4 years, 10m subs for wow

Should bring everything to 30-50M per year for FFXIV using the same ridiculous parameters...

10,4M usd per month income .. 4,166M of upkeep
5.1 USD of upkeep price per 13 USD sub

The Russian sub most probably returns a profit anyways



I got my sources while I couldn't find the detailed breakdown( and I'm not in the mood to calculate it) I can give a reasonable estimate of how much it costs to keep ffxiv running:
https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2330507,00.asp

4 years of WoW upkeep (2004-2008) costed 200 million USD

Since this isn't wow let's double that (400M) as square costs with costumer support are huge

And to make things fair, as modern game development is expensive, instead of 4 years let's take this value as a single year upkeep cost for FFXIV

So we have an (400M /12 months = 33,3333... USD per month) idea of how much it costs to keep ffxiv running per month 33,33333... Million USD per month.

Now ffxiv have 6 million active subscribers, let us be fair, everybody pays only the entry sub of 13USD and no one have extra retainers or buy things on mogstation, it would be an absurd to think otherwise

This would make .... 78 million dollars of revenue per month ... That means .... Around 44 MILLION DOLLARS per month of profit for Square enix now for a single sub this means... That for a entry sub(13 USD) the amount used to pay for the game development, server upkeep, costumer support, etc is




5,67 USD


yep, everything considered, using the lowest values as possible for income and an absurd value for expense...

THE RUSSIAN SUB RETURNS A PROFIT


I hope this ends any and all argument regarding the square enix charity


Side notes:

If square was really spending 400 million USD per year to keep the game afloat it would be cheaper to make final fantasy xiv: a realm re-reborn just to remake the server architecture from scratch

I don\'t even have to say that the actual income is higher from standard subscriptions and mogstation sales

[IzumiOgata]

Thanks a lot for the source!

Taking that into account it's really hard to swallow that they couldn't take a cut on their profit to bring in more money on the long run, If they wanted to get more money in I'm pretty sure (and I've seen it in this thread) that most people would accept a raise on the fee, as long as it was made with previous notice and wasn't something absurd like a 300% raise, I'm pretty sure that the russian players wouldn't mind even a doubling of it, since as other people mentioned on this thread then it would fall at the same price bracket as WoW.

I honestly only keep questioning the reasoning behind this decision more and more as information gets out. =/

[Vizu00]

The reasoning for regional pricing is exactly that, you reduce the profit margin to increase the number of units sold, increasing the profit overall, MMOs have the worse scaling of all digital goods (it never reaches the ridiculous100%u0025 profit margin) but even then it is way more profitable to offer a regional pricing since it still scales really well.

[Texa]

The reasoning for regional pricing is exactly that, you reduce the profit margin to increase the number of units sold, increasing the profit overall, MMOs have the worse scaling of all digital goods (it never reaches the ridiculous100%u0025 profit margin) but even then it is way more profitable to offer a regional pricing since it still scales really well.

It increases brand recognition and presence internationally too, which is desirable for a game like FF XIV which is seeking to be viewed as one of the best mmos to play and invest time in.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

FFXIv does not have 6 million subscribers, it has had 6 million accounts created. Vastly different things. It is much closer i believe to 800k-1mil subs.

[Vizu00]

FFXIv does not have 6 million subscribers, it has had 6 million accounts created. Vastly different things. It is much closer i believe to 800k-1mil subs.

I believe you are correct, however, the amount needed to break even probably won't be more than 5usd, the 200 M USD for 4 years was during the time WoW had around 10M active subscribers and blizzard herself said that the bulk of the costs were with costumer support, if you wish I can do another estimative with a 800k sub number, however I would also have to tweak the costs.


Doing some head math ...

200 - 4 years, 10m subs

Should bring everything to 30-50M per year using the same ridiculous parameters...

10,4M usd per month income .. 4,166M of upkeep
5.1 USD of upkeep price per 13 USD sub

The Russian sub most probably returns a profit anyways

[AdrikRuk]

Game price didnt change, auto-reneval price didnt change. Its still looks like a steam bug that no one wants to fix. We still have only one response from SE, but it too looks like excuse from lazy forum moderator.

[Texa]

Game price didnt change, auto-reneval price didnt change. Its still looks like a steam bug that no one wants to fix. We still have only one response from SE, but it too looks like excuse from lazy forum moderator.

There have been a multitude of identical responses from customer support tickets that also state it was intentional. Please don't blame the mod for doing their job and posting what they were told by their superiors.

[Sinistral]

There have been a multitude of identical responses from customer support tickets that also state it was intentional. Please don't blame the mod for doing their job and posting what they were told by their superiors.

Also, the forum mods are just contractors. They arent even part of SE.