Potential Sub Price Decrease

[ZephyrMenodora]

Publishers are starting to charge $70 for games due to inflation and the costs of development increasing; there's no way we'll ever get a sub price decrease and if anything I'm just thankful they haven't decided to hike the price. I pay the $13 a month for the lower one and that's fine for me. I would never argue against paying less, I just sincerely believe there's 0 chance SE will ever entertain that idea.

I vividly remember paying (well, my older brother paying) $80 for the SNES copy of Street Fighter 2: Turbo, and that was 20 years ago. Something has to give with budgets rising into 100+ Million for large games, I'm sure.

[Greyhawk]

Oh? I wasn't aware FFXIV had a different philosophy. Inherently a subscription exists in MMOs to fund the continued development of the game, ie: patches and added content. They were devised as the first model to sustain a game that wasn't developed, finished and then shipped. When the Expansion model was brought around, subscriptions stayed as a buffer since expansions in MMOs are usually a year or two apart, and the subscription is what funds that development as the proceeds from the purchase of the game/expansion was just earning back what they spent and generating some profit.

I've never seen anything to indicate that CBU3 handles this philosophy differently however.

Read the terms of any MMO out there. You are paying a subscription to access the game, nothing else. This isn't specific to FFXIV, this has beent he standard for MMOs as far back (that I can remember) to Asheron's Call (the same time EverQuest originated). This is why some companies will compensate players with something if they have downtime that's outside of their normal maintenance and patch cycles, such as days' worth of downtime due to unforseen circumstances. Not all of them do it, and none of them have to (the terms cover it normally) but it's a nice gesture at times.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

According to inflation we should be paying over $20 a month.

[Greyhawk]

Wildstar, Archeage, Secret World.
Have you heard about them? No? That's why they went from sub to F2P lol.

To add to that list - SWTOR did this their first year of release, you have the option of F2P or a sub. Frankly, F2P is utterly painful to play in that game, for the sole purpose of making you have to sub to play it. It's so limiting in F2P is painful to the point of you either like it so much you sub, or uninstall it faster than you can click the button to do so.

[Payadopa]

According to inflation we should be paying over $20 a month.

The gaming industry is way larger now and makes twice as much as Hollywood and ten times as much as the music industry. Games on demand means less storages and less shipping. Devs also don't create their own engines as much anymore and just stick to Unreal or whatever. Funny how those aspects always get swept under the rug. Oh and did the recent AAA price increase lead to no Mtx (that can bunkrupt you)? Would a potential sub increase lead to the cash shop bekommen mg abolished? lol Yeah, good one. Honestly, we need a new gaming crash like we had in the 80s.

[DPZ2]

Honestly, we need a new gaming crash like we had in the 80s.

So, the economic loss of US$30 billion dollars across 3 years in arcade, console and computer video games, coupled with the destruction of the US video console market, coupled with the rise of proprietary game consoles was a great thing?

[MsMisato]

I will be flat out honest I don’t see them lowering or raising the sub price. There are two option a 9.99 with limited characters and the regular price I think 14.99.

[Mcg55ss]

This is an unbelievably based take

Lol what is based about it

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

The gaming industry is way larger now and makes twice as much as Hollywood and ten times as much as the music industry. Games on demand means less storages and less shipping. Devs also don't create their own engines as much anymore and just stick to Unreal or whatever. Funny how those aspects always get swept under the rug. Oh and did the recent AAA price increase lead to no Mtx (that can bunkrupt you)? Would a potential sub increase lead to the cash shop bekommen mg abolished? lol Yeah, good one. Honestly, we need a new gaming crash like we had in the 80s.

Yes, all of what you said has everything to do with square and the fact that XIV is running on an in-house engine, not a licensed 3rd party one.

[LilimoLimomo]

When you pay a subscription in an MMO, you are directly paying for patch content, not Expansion content. You already paid your $60 for the expansion....
To put it in perspective, at nearly $15 a month you are paying the entire box price of the game or an expansion *per patch* at their 4 month patch cycle. Do you think that $60 is a fair price for a half hour of MSQ, 1 dungeon, and 1 trial?

With respect, this is not an accurate analysis; if we take a step back and look at the experiences of non-cutting-edge players, we can see how this isn't true.

Example 1:

If I'm a new player and I buy Dawntrail and start playing the day it releases, my $15 a month gets me access to all of the content in the game. That's 6 expansions, as well as all of the patch content for 5 expansions. And I have access to all of it for just $15!

Example 2:

Let's take a more up-to-date player. They bought Endwalker, played it to completion in a month ($15), and then ended their sub. If they come back for Dawntrail, they'll have all the patch content waiting for them...without having paid any of the years' worth of subscription prices that you're proposing are their cost. A mere $15 for their first month back gives them access to all of it.

These examples demonstrate how there isn't a correlation between the amount paid for subscriptions and access to patch content.

The Way Things Really Work

There are two costs you need to pay to play Final Fantasy IV (excluding free trial content): content and access.

Content: The price of the newest expansion will get you access to that expansion's content (as well as any previous expansions' content). Without this, you cannot play the content of an expansion.

Access: Your monthly subscription cost gives you permission to access the servers. Without this, you can't play the game at all.

Aided by this more accurate model, we can see that patch content is not paid for by a player's subscription; rather, it is included with the price of the expansion content. Once you've purchased the expansion, you can access the patch content as soon as it is available without paying any additional fees; you simply need to pay the subscription fee for access during the period in which you want to access that content.