A similar MMO undergoing a "FFXIV" phase?

[Antipika]

I am only half agree with this, about the SE part it is hard to say as we technicaly dont know the company income

Well the only income they had was from retail sales... So even without exact figures, if you consider the amount of people working on the XIV project (JP/NA/EU staff), the amount spend on marketing (all right not that much, but still there was some advert here and there), server upkeep, etc. I hardly doubt that what they earned did cover over 1 year of expenses.

And I'm not even gonna talk about pre-release dev costs...

[Jinko]

Betel what I meant is that SE have the money and resources and experience that this should have never been a problem.

The only other company on the same scale as SE and blizzard (well thats not true really) and they haven't released a new MMO.

I very much doubt if and when Blizzard do release their next MMO it won't be rushed to the market half finished with conflicting development decisions.

[Betelgeuzah]

Betel what I meant is that SE have the money and resources and experience that this should have never been a problem.

The only other company on the same scale as SE and blizzard (well thats not true really) and they haven't released a new MMO.

Many companies are on the level to pull off a successful MMO. Otherwise they wouldn't even try.

You're implying that somehow there's a big difference compared to companies focusing on an MMO vs. companies where only a part of the assets are focused on an MMO. Just because SE or Activision-Blizzard or EA are big doesn't mean they are using more money on their MMO than these one-trick-pony studios. Every large MMO publisher has what it takes, while some of them have other venues as well.

Like I said, every single MMO studio that has produced a sequel/new IP MMO in the past 5+ years has had the resources and experience to pull off a successful MMO. Yet none of them didn't. They all failed when they shouldn't have.

They don't deserve a free pass just because they don't have the assets to develop 10 different products at the same time. More than anything, since they aren't so spread apart they should be able to produce the game better than these large multi-national multi-layered organizations to whom the MMO and all the services surrounding it are only a small part of the company's bottom line at best.

[Geesus]

Well the only income they had was from retail sales... So even without exact figures, if you consider the amount of people working on the XIV project (JP/NA/EU staff), the amount spend on marketing (all right not that much, but still there was some advert here and there), server upkeep, etc. I hardly doubt that what they earned did cover over 1 year of expenses.

And I'm not even gonna talk about pre-release dev costs...

Last I read earlier this year was, SE was in the hole 7 billion with the failure thus far of XIV. I will attempt to find that article again.

Edit: Here you go

[Kiote]

Yeah sure, and who is gonna pay their salary during that time? No company can sustain over a year without any income but retail sales when they prepared a business plan with a monthly fee. Retail sales SE made weren't even enough to cover upkeep cost up to now...

Actually, there is a history. in the offline game world, of start-ups asking developers to forgo paychecks in exchange for profit share in the event of a success. So this kind of things can be done by companies with little capitol investment as long as they have a dedicated team. ex. Harmonix Music Systems did this for Rock Band

[Betelgeuzah]

Upkeep costs are laughably small.

[syntaxlies]

you wrote a similar mmo undergoing...when it should have said an mmo undergoing a similar path as ffxiv. The mmos themselves are not very much alike

[Jennestia]

I think what Jinko is saying is that SE shouldn't have been in this situation in the first place with the lessons they learned from their previous *successful* MMO. SE made the same mistake twice - that's the issue. It's like the right hand didn't know what the left hand was doing.

See here's the thing:

They wouldn't be if people didn't keep thinking FFXI and FMO is the devil and shouldn't have existed, thus they wouldn't have tried to make XIV as different from XI as possible and thus not even ignore the basics. If they simply built off of FFXI like they should have, as in show they gained experience making and running two MMOs the past 9 years, things would have been a lot better.

But sadly, mere mention of their prior MMOs meets you with the equivalent of being told to repent.

[Antipika]

Upkeep costs are laughably small.

In upkeep, I do include anyone working in the project salary. I am not only talking about server upkeep cost. (which are negligible yes). But paying the dev team, the translators, the community team, the support team, the business dev team, PR and Marketing teams etc. That's another story.

Actually, there is a history. in the offline game world, of start-ups asking developers to forgo paychecks in exchange for profit share in the event of a success. So this kind of things can be done by companies with little capitol investment as long as they have a dedicated team. ex. Harmonix Music Systems did this for Rock Band

It's not like everyone can live off nothing. I tomorrow my employer tells me : ok for the next year, no income, but if the game is a success you'll earn profit in share. Well then I'm screwed. Cannot pay my rent anymore etc.

[Betelgeuzah]

In upkeep, I do include anyone working in the project salary. I am not only talking about server upkeep cost. (which are negligible yes).

I still can't agree that the 600k+ copies sold didn't cover the production costs for the year. There's a lot of employee's working fulltime on this game, the company's top assets included, but it's still merely a year of production time and 600k copies sold is by no means a small number.

EDIT: actually the game has sold a total of 560k copies in EU and NA alone as of this day. JP included the total would most likely exceed 700k copies, perhaps even climbing up close to 800k.