Money this game makes

[Dzian]

The thing players need to be realistic about is 15 million players or however many does not mean 15 million subs.

The money this game makes and the money people think it makes are 2 vastly different numbers.

This has a big effect on budgets and content etc.

[EnigmaticDodo]

You're not "supporting" anything;" you're paying for a live service. If you want to influence how SQEnix uses its money, buy some shares.

Raw entitlement and snark is another way to go, I guess.

I don't feel entitled to anything, I was just asking a question. And it's snarky to call objective failures what they are? I'm talking their failed Marvel LS, Babylons fall being dead on arrival, and this Chocobo GP game now too. Sorry if you're in a bad mood!

[CosmicCoqui]

You're not "supporting" anything;" you're paying for a live service. If you want to influence how SQEnix uses its money, buy some shares.

Raw entitlement and snark is another way to go, I guess.

Uhm, you do know the person was just voicing a concern? Amazes me people still go after anyone really that voice any critique of SE when it involves ff14 or ff14 itself...

[kaynide]

As with any company, profits go back into the company as a whole to be utilized for whatever endeavors the company wants to undertake. Some of it being more Final Fantasy 14.

Let's be real here: Profits from Final Fantasy 1 did not go into making more Final Fantasy 1.

If you want to specifically support 14, the devs HAVE made it clear that ALL profits made in the MogShop go back into the game directly (it has paid for additional housing wards in the past, for example). Keep in mind they didn't need to do this and indeed most DLC shops don't fund the core game.

This will sound counter intuitive, but my recommendation if you want to support FF14 as much as possible would be to get the cheapest plan (like the entry level, or the 6-month-at-a-time for the same price), then whatever money you might have spent on extra characters/retainers simply can be used on mogstation things. Or alternatively support the game via attending events.

[IdowhatIwant]

Is a significant amount of it going back into the game itself? I don't like supporting square-enix's other constant live service failures if that isn't the case.

No I can imagine that a majority of the money this game makes is dumped into the really crappy FF7 remake.

I don't find an issue with 14's content, other than maybe wanting more dungeons, but that's besides the point.

Square-Enix keeps wasting millions of dollars trying to essentially get rich quick, but without the required effort, and I wouldn't feel good if the money I spend here isn't mainly supporting FF14. I think it's a valid concern, but maybe that's just me! Perhaps it's an overblown concern too, who knows!?

Hate to break it to you, the number of dungeons is the first thing FF14 team cut from the budget. You can look through the expansions and see with each expansion there are less dungeons.

You're not "supporting" anything;" you're paying for a live service. If you want to influence how SQEnix uses its money, buy some shares.

Raw entitlement and snark is another way to go, I guess.

I don't believe his comment was entitled or snark. SE is not a very great company specially since they became SE. They funnel money from successful titles or projects in production and produce very bad games with it in the end. They have done this for years even when they were Square Soft. But your comment was that of a smart ass.

[Aurora_Sylphy]

It's the same thing I mentioned in a Skirois thread regarding Square ever needing to 'apologize' for releasing too much content and the people screaming that FF14 makes boatloads of money hence boatloads of content and at a fast pace should be expected. We have no idea of what percentage of the revenue FF14 generates for Square Enix is compared to the amount of that money that is reinvested or set aside for FF14s budget. Is money going back into the game? Of course, money needs to be paid to the developers and staff, on marketing and other associated fees, etc. Now a 100% increase in revenue and profit from FF14 does not mean 100% increase, or even a proportional increase in budget allocated for FF14. For all we know over the last decades (barring big one time spends like expanding data centres with new servers, which was more due to chip and worldwide shortages as opposed to cost) the budget may have remained relatively static (seeing marginal increases year on year or simply adjusting budgets to account for inflation and fluctuations in currency value).

You would need to look at Square's yearly financial documents if you would want to know the exact numbers. It might seem logical that more money equals a bigger budget, but that's not how companies nor capitalism works. No company, no matter how good their product is, is ultimately out to make money for the company, for the investors and for their shareholders. They do what makes them money, and prioritise what makes them money, and if that so happens to be good for their customer base, well that's serendipity and a lucky accident. There is a good chance that FF14s budget has been increased due to it's explosive growth and increased revenue, but we have no idea how much, or how that correlates to the money they make. And if I would guess based on how corporations always act in their own best interests and those of their investors and shareholders, I would imagine they would try their hardest to give them the minimum budget they would need to continue to pump out content that makes increasing amounts of money, cause that's less expenses for the company, and thus more profit and revenue (and thus more expensive shares making investors, shareholders and board members all happy). That's capitalism for you, and unfortunately there is not much we can do about that.

[SamsaraTrickstar]

Sadly no. It don't get more cash . They get new servers here and there but that's it. Any thing extra go to SE directly and support all the fail trash they do

[Minarisweet]

Can't give you precise information sadly but as someone else mentioned I too have heard that the mogstation stuff goes directly into the game.

[Fyrebrand]

No company would put all it's single profits back into that single product. The money they make on FFXIV goes to the company as a whole.

This. The truth is, we have no way of knowing how much of FFXIV's profits go directly back to funding the game, and Square Enix is never going to tell us. However, it's certainly not 100% of profits, and probably not even a majority of the profits.

I do get the sense that FFXIV is being seriously invested in and supported by the company though -- indeed, they'd be fools not to since FFXIV is an extremely profitable game and has the potential to remain that way for a long time. There are only a handful of games in the world that can still survive under the monthly subscription model, so simply having that alone is an insane amount of revenue even before cash shop purchases enter the picture. Square Enix has every reason to keep this a game that players want to remain subscribed to.

One of the strengths of FFXIV, I think, is that it has a strong and focused creative vision put into it, and devs that are personally invested and passionately committed to it. There comes a point where throwing more money at the game doesn't actually get more work done -- because, where does the money go? Either you just pay your workers more money for the same amount of labour (maybe they ought to, I dunno), or else you hire more and more staff and risk bloating the team to an unmanageable level. I guess the question is, can Yoshi-P and other senior devs manage more employees while still maintaining the creative standards they want to, or does everything become too big that it becomes the out-of-control development hell of FFXIII and FFXV?

Let's be real here: Profits from Final Fantasy 1 did not go into making more Final Fantasy 1.

Come on now, that's not a valid analogy and you know it. Every video game at the time was a physical, stand-alone product that had no way of being updated, patched, or expanded. Final Fantasy wasn't even an established series at that point, just an experimental game they didn't know would be a success or not. Making Final Fantasy II at all was as much "making more Final Fantasy 1" as anyone could have expected, so it shows the original game was profitable enough that Square saw fit to invest in more of "that," whatever they thought "that" was at the time.

[hagare]

I want to say that I've heard that whilst subscription and expansion profit is split amongst SE IPs as a whole, cash shop proceeds go directly back into XIV.

I thought t was he other way around.
that the 14 team has final say about the game but the store is all SE.