No New MMO Yet From Square? Why Havent They Seized The Moment?

[RitsukoSonoda]

I think is nothing short of a miracle that XI and XIV (and a DQ one I think) are still running.

Avengers went belly up, that bizarre ff7 flavored fortnite-like died super quickly and that one co-op game whose name I forgot also tanked in a few months.
Square is probably terrified of such a big risk, specially when a couple of low effort cellphone games can keep them in the green.

They are also more trend chasers than setters now, I fully expect their next online venture to be closer to something like Genshin rather than a traditional or original idea.

Too bad the XI "remake" never happened. I'm still curious what would have happened.

Avengers honestly was just poorly executed as it attempted to copy Destiny's playstyle.

As for the next online venture being more Genshin/BotW in nature, I could see that for a new Mana series entry. That kind of open world play style just feels like the next natural step for that particular franchise.

The XI remake wasn't really slated to be an actual remake, More just a remaster to facelift all the visuals since it started as a PS2 game. However there are rumors floating around that they're currently working on an offline version of the title to provide to people when the online servers finally get taken down.

Dragon Quest X also has had rumors floating around about finally being made available outside of Japan. These picked up considerably after a DQ streaming event where they announced an offline version of the game that contained all the content excluding I think the 2 or 3 most recent expansions which was intended to be a way for new players in Japan to essentially catch up without paying the sub since upon completing it, the player had the option to create or link an SE account and port the character into online servers to play the rest of the game. Keep in mind DQX also has an unlimited free trial similar to FFXIV and some in game systems designed to help speed players along the earlier parts of the game as well such as the angel slime hat campaign.

SE also had Front Mission Online back in the PlayOnline days before SE accounts existed which sadly got taken down, though it never left Japan.

[Swordsman]

with no guarantee they'll convince the existing FFXIV playerbase to move over.

Yeah, this too. Some of the more diehard fans have probably sunk tens of thousands of hours into this game as well as hundreds of dollars into glams and mounts. They'll probably be hesitant to abandon that all unless SE allows some things to transfer over.

Even announcing a new FF MMO basically signals to people that FFXIV won't see as much attention.

I can actually see some FFXIV players even opposing the idea of a new SE MMO because that means their favorite game will no longer be on SE's pedestal

[MonsutaMan]

Yeah, WoW is not on the decline and still the MMO King (I don't play it though).

XVII may be an MMO

XI was revealed when IX and X were.

IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII?

Who they gonna put on it though? Think it will be a new face because I don't see anyone part of SE losing 2 billion dollars being part of a new MMO lol, which has been their cash cows.

[DPZ2]

Given the history of PlatinumGames, it's no wonder that Babylon's Fall didn't work out.

Marvel's Avengers was probably the prime reason Square Enix sold Crystal Dynamics to the Embracer Group.

As for a new MMORPG, the Inverse article from last year makes it clear: https://www.inverse.com/gaming/final...uminaries-2022

[Mcg55ss]

I cant speak for anything else in that list but WoW



Is extremely false actually, but you do you lol.

WoW retail has been very stable this expansion, one of the most stable ever if anything and the player retention is actually good.

https://www.dexerto.com/world-of-war...zzard-2217897/



Which also has been proven by subscriber numbers on various websites.

No one knows subscriber numbers and WoW doesn't separate sub numbers so WTF are you talking about. Player retention doesn't mean much when your game was at its LOWEST point after last expansion basically if they stayed through that disaster they probably aren't leaving, retail has a huge amount of raid loggers vs classic doesn't and classic seems to have a tighter community because of the nature of the game over retail. Both will have rises and falls but the biggest difference is retail can go play classic on top of retail, classic cannot play retail unless they buy the expansion. WoW forums pretty much is agreeance that classic is the more popular titles atm mainly due to its hardcore server being about 2 months old, now will it last probably not. Just like everything it iwll have huge influx slowly die off the level at a certain point.

[Shurrikhan]

With FF14 being built on the old Crystal Engine and extremely limited by it...

1.x was built on Crystal Tools. ARR and onward was not. The game was rebuilt into a wholly new engine -- a simplified derivative of Luminous, the same engine XV and XVI run on (though each likewise on different derivatives thereof).

Remember that "Final Fantasy XIV" will interchangeably refer to 1.x, specifically --as that's the period before any subtitle was attached-- and the ongoing game. I'd say "you could have just Googled this..." but it also might require the tiniest bit of critical thought and actually opening one of those links (rather than relying just on the Google quick-answer).

WoW is in decline, classic is more popular than retail, and will continue to be so.

WoW is presently performing more healthily than it has since... WotLK? Its player retention over the course of its expansion and between patches is weirdly high for an MMO.

[Reimmi]

I cant speak for anything else in that list but WoW



Is extremely false actually, but you do you lol.

WoW retail has been very stable this expansion, one of the most stable ever if anything and the player retention is actually good.

https://www.dexerto.com/world-of-war...zzard-2217897/



Which also has been proven by subscriber numbers on various websites.

Kinda sad that all it took was an above average expansion for them to come crawling back lol
i played it on launch and really wasn't impressed as someone who's played since 2005, it was just the same old same old

[Absurdity]

Kinda sad that all it took was an above average expansion for them to come crawling back lol
i played it on launch and really wasn't impressed as someone who's played since 2005, it was just the same old same old

I'm not surprised, since that's exactly what people were asking for. No borrowed power, return to proper talent trees, fun side activities, longterm grinds that are however completely optional, basically just what older expansions offered but with a new twist to them.
Their rework to crafting also actually allows crafters to make endgame viable gear.

[WeebPolice]

Yeah, this too. Some of the more diehard fans have probably sunk tens of thousands of hours into this game as well as hundreds of dollars into glams and mounts. They'll probably be hesitant to abandon that all unless SE allows some things to transfer over.

My guess is they won't, citizen. Why let players transfer old items to the new MMO when Square can just have them spend more by making them buy all new items? That sounds like something Square would do.




We serve so others do not have to.

[Halivel]

I'm curious to know why Square hasn't positioned itself to take over the mmo market with a new MMO yet. With FF14 being built on the old Crystal Engine and extremely limited by it, and with all the lessons learned from 10+ years of development on it, and with a large portion of the MMO community at large focused on Square, why haven't we seen SE seize the moment?

The market is ready for a new major MMO to take the scene and corner the market for the next 10 years.

WoW is in decline, classic is more popular than retail, and will continue to be so.
ESO is forgettable.
BDO / Korean MMOs dont fare well in the west because nobody wants to gamble/p2w
GW2 has all but died out, with no hope that arenanet makes a GW3
All the alpha mmos (CU, Pantheon, Ashes) are nothing more than vaporware for 7+ years


The time is now, and it baffles me why square hasn't took the initiative to secure the market with a well made, competent mmo that's running on an updated engine with the lessons they've learned from ff14.

I fear they are, or have already lost the initiative to really secure a large dynasty mmo, and as records show, competently made mmos are one of the most secure forms of profit available to gaming companies.

MMO games are extremely expensive to develop and even more expensive to maintain with no guarantee of success. The genre overall is experiencing a bit of a decline these years - not even necessarily because there're no good projects, but at the very least because the way people now prefer to experience their games has significantly changed over the course of last 10 years or so.

FF14 being as big as it got is already a miracle to be honest, and part of the reason to that (aside from the game being good) is that the game is generally done in a way where you don't need to be online for more that a couple of hours per week - something that is still relatively rare for the market of classic MMOs.

There's also the fact that despite all complaints about Endwalker, the game is overall on its highest rise at the moment. There's simply little reason to allocating enormous funds and recources to a new MMO project that can end up being a fluke (and would damage their reputation as a developer further if that happens), when this one is as successful as it currently is. FF11 is still running too (and apparently even started getting updates again after being in a maintenance mode for a while, from what I've gathered).

As things stand at the moment, they'll fare better by keeping their focus on FF14 while making new single player titles on the side, at least for another few years if not more.