FFXIV is not a failure, never was.

[Antipika]

You forget the little detail that this game had several branding deals in Japan in place even before release, which means that it made SE money (and not small money) even before the first box reached the shelves.
Fact is that we don't know the numbers. For what we know the whole operation can easily still be on the green. Again, branding deals aren't small money, and SE had them in place with basically every major PC manufacturer in Japan.

I hope you are joking right? Branding deals comes up with goals to achieve on their contract. SE gets money if... the game is a success.

If I am a manufacturer, I pay you to put your name on my product, but then the reputation of your product is one of the worst + your product doesn't sell (which doesn't boost my sales as well), then I won't pay you much and even worse, I will not sign any new contract with you ever again. If SE made money with branding, they didn't make much and one sure thing, they lost rep on the way as well.

And branding outside Japan was a failure as well. If you check the official XIV controller released in EU, MSRP is 40 euros and the controller quality is poor. (as good as any third party controller you can get off on eBay for 10 euros). No one is buying it. Are you wondering why they had no partnership with decent brand such as Logitech for hardware? SE cannot afford it.

Anyway, even if branding was successful, global income results would still be far away from SE's expectations. There is no discussion about that, it is a {fact}. When your goal is to make money of subscriptions + branding. You remove subscriptions. What remains? Less income. Not enough to reach goals that were set initially.