Square Enix Financial statement: DT 42m USD DOWN

[Striker44]

Not surprising. Endwalker was the wrap up of a ten-year story, everyone knew this expansion good or bad would be a slow burn in preparation for the next big thing so there wasn't as much hype, and Yoshi said his team was going to try new things and some may fail while other ideas may thrive.

DT's MSQ wasn't great, sure. They tried something different, and it received a mixed reception, people liked some things about DT and disliked others. I hope they learned from this and the next time they try something new it works because in Endwalker people were getting bored with the game, Yoshi acknowledged people were getting bored which means their sub numbers likely reflected that sentiment.

Putting it another way, WoW had Shadowlands which tanked so badly it forced their team to re-evaluate their approach to the game. Their next xpac was nothing like Shadowlands and the game recovered, resulting in their audience getting to enjoy a great new experience. While DT is nowhere near as bad as Shadowlands, it is hurting SE, and if SE learns from this they may be able to build off what did / did not work and make us something great in a couple patches or by the next xpac. Here's hoping.

You know the data linked in the OP's post is from before DT, right? No clue why he included DT at all unless it's either dishonest bait or someone who ran with a story they liked without bothering to check if it made any sense. DT is doing fine. Active playerbase numbers show it has the same retention as every other expansion, with 3-4 times the playerbase of the HW/SB era and about 50% higher than ShB. A month after DT's release, the playerbase was the highest ever except for the release month of DT itself and the brief super-spike we saw a few years back from the "WoW exodus."

[CamuiKushi]

Lemme first preface this by saying I think Yoshi P is "one of the good ones" when it comes to higher ups at SE and him having a more prominent role in the company is probably a good thing on the whole. But boy does it sure suck for FF14 fans.

That said, I think these financials demonstrate a failing in Endwalker's patch content approach, given the timing of the report. DT came out just barely before the new financial year began (like, 2 or 3 days?). We won't really know how it affected the company's bottom line until a year from now.
I'm all for calling out the failures of DT where it's deserved, but we don't have the facts to make a financial case yet.

All the side content in DT so far has been much better than the MSQ... As much as complaining about wuk seems overboard, she is just a terrible character all around... Yaana in her 5 minutes of screentime in the Arcadion storyline has shown more emotion and given more reason to care about her than wuk did in like 10 hours of MSQ...

This is true. I broke up the MSQ by doing all the side quests in each zone and I think I had an overall better experience than a few of my mates.

[CuteBucket]

This is true. I broke up the MSQ by doing all the side quests in each zone and I think I had an overall better experience than a few of my mates.

I did this as well, but if anything it made the lackluster MSQ stand out even more for me. The side quests weren't amazing, but I felt like the writers behind them were really trying to tell a story about the world and the people in it in the short time they had to do so far more than anything happening in the MSQ.

For example, there's some pretty good side quests in Solution 9 that demonstrate far better than the MSQ did that this place is NOT the happy idyllic future city Sphene wants us to believe it is. Quests that go into people suffering from degenerative disease with little to no access to healthcare, homeless citizens digging through the trash for food because Zoraal Ja has been tanking the economy, people getting mugged for their spare soul cells, an undertaker haunted by the face of a man he took in that we investigate and reveal was his own father that he had forgotten, interesting stuff that gives more of that darker, more mature feel I had been so desperately craving by that point in the story.

...And then I would go back to the MSQ where Wuk Lamat is trying to be best friends with Sphene and preaching to us about how we need to understand and respect the Alexandrian's dystopian culture. -_-

Wuk, I cleared out every side quest in this zone. This place is MESSED UP and these people are NOT having a good time. Also I went and actually talked with and helped a bunch of them as opposed to just simping over their teenage robot queen, so maybe I know more about this place than you do, hm?

Yeah, I was super frustrated by that point.

----

Anyway, back to the financial statement point of the thread. It's fine for Square-Enix to want to invest FFXIV money into other projects, that's a pretty normal business thing to do. It would just be nice if they, y'know, invested that time and money into cool things that don't suck instead of whatever the hell they've been putting out the last few years. And why did CS3 have to make FFXVI? It absolutely hurt the content and quality of Endwalker, and for what? Why is the FFXIV unit working on all these other projects now after being the FFXIV exclusive team for years? That really doesn't make sense to me.

[Thurmnmurmn]

You know the data linked in the OP's post is from before DT, right? No clue why he included DT at all unless it's either dishonest bait or someone who ran with a story they liked without bothering to check if it made any sense. DT is doing fine. Active playerbase numbers show it has the same retention as every other expansion, with 3-4 times the playerbase of the HW/SB era and about 50% higher than ShB. A month after DT's release, the playerbase was the highest ever except for the release month of DT itself and the brief super-spike we saw a few years back from the "WoW exodus."

This is just me being nitpicky but, the player base does not equal retention. Retention means you know it's the same players returning and not possibly new ones.

[Thaciscokidd]

That dip is to be expected between expacs. People checking out other games, taking a break before Dawntrail, and other reasons, but that report isn't the nothing burger that people are making it out to be.

The Games for Smart Devices/PC Browser sub-segment
posted net sales of ¥101.5 billion (down ¥12.1 billion YoY)
and operating income of ¥14.2 billion (down ¥2.0 billion).
Although multiple new titles were released in FY2024/3, they
were unable to offset the decline in earnings from existing
titles that have aged.

Now you combine it with what Yoshi P said in that article from Famitsu that's been linked in this thread and you can kinda put the puzzle together. Mobile games are Squenix's true golden hen not XiV like so many people here think.

Sometimes it feels like CS3 is getting pulled every which direction that is not XiV because of how positive a lot of people are about them(some even supporting games just because they are on it). If they do start developing newer mobile games I hope that they leave CS3 alone.

[Palladiamors]

Honestly, it’s not all that surprising when you think about it.

Aside from the PS5 exclusivity, there’s a whole mix of factors at play. First, you’ve got the nostalgia crowd—some of them probably bailed because they weren’t happy with the direction Remake was taking compared to the original FF7. Then there’s the regular players who might’ve checked out after the first entry, either because it didn’t hold their interest or they decided to wait for a discount before picking it up. And then, of course, there are people like me, who either aren’t super interested or are just waiting for the full trilogy to drop before diving in.

To add on to this, sequels for mainline games never sell as much as the original. While Rebirth is just Calm up to the temple of Ancients, it was still split and made into its own thing which satisfies the criteria. They also shot themselves in the foot by not also releasing it for PlayStation 4 where Remake was but Squenix just loves abandoning old consoles that are still popular.

Personally? The VII Remake fundamentally misunderstood the setting, tone, and characters of the original and oh so desperately wanted to leave it's own stamp on the VII name. Nomura was so obsessed with Nomurafying it that he didn't care about making it true to the original. I'm also not to pleased with the middle finger that is the whispered...but I'll refrain. I'd be here all day tearing the game down if I let my mind wander.

[CVXIV]

This is true. I broke up the MSQ by doing all the side quests in each zone and I think I had an overall better experience than a few of my mates.

Generally this is what I do as well, I do every single side quest before moving on to the next area and I had a really fun time.