Square Enix Financial Results Fiscal Year 2025

[hydralus]

Looks like their anime division is doing quite well too. That's nice. I have enjoyed a lot of the anime they've produced.

[ElysiumDragon]

Society has changed? How? Gaming always had both hardcore and casual players, and when a company charges monthly for their servers, people expect content in both quality and quantity because they value their money. You're speaking like it's impossible for SE satisfy both groups. It's not. Most people here ask for a game catering to both, but I doubt this thought ever crossed your mind.

People don't hardcore commit their entire lives to a single game anywhere near as much as they did back in the Halcyon days of WoW. That's been the big shift. One solitary game can't meet a demand for infinite and eternally-relevant content, unless the game is built entirely around the concept of 'player-generated content' to begin with.

[Kandraxx]

FFXIV has been following the same formula for a decade, with its lead director encouraging players to try other games when they feel bored, rather than providing more content to keep them engaged. Each new piece of content has required longer patches. It's no secret that the game could fall back to pre-Shadowbringers numbers and still remain financially sustainable for Square Enix.

That said, Dawntrail sales were still a success, despite a significant drop in subscription numbers. Patch 8.0 will mark the first expansion released after a main story flop, which has traditionally been the primary reason players buy the new expansions. Meanwhile, many long-time players have been driven away by changes unrelated to the narrative, such as the removal of long-term grinds and the oversimplification of content and job design. Losing the MSQ as one of FFXIV's key strengths feels like pulling a rug out, and the full consequences of that may only become clear in 8.0 and beyond.

Just look at how the relics and daily quests evolved, or rather devolved.

ARR relic: basically a game in itself
EW relic: yeah just bring me stuff for 6000 poetics you can buy from the NPC one aetheryte teleport away from here.

ARR daily: travel across the world, gather, fish, escort.
EW daily: yeah…..mine stuff from the rock to my left and give it to the guy to my right.

[Sorainthy]

Just look at how the relics and daily quests evolved, or rather devolved.

ARR relic: basically a game in itself
EW relic: yeah just bring me stuff for 6000 poetics you can buy from the NPC one aetheryte teleport away from here.

ARR daily: travel across the world, gather, fish, escort.
EW daily: yeah…..mine stuff from the rock to my left and give it to the guy to my right.

Returning player here. Do not remember to which Expension I played. But I started with a fresh account (xbox) and my partner all over and I am quite shocked from time to time how even in ARR the designe changed to NOT work with other people...

Lv 50 Main Scenario Raids - gulped down to a normal Main Scenario encounter and a few 4 player dungeons available for NPC Helper
Lv 50 Road to Ishgard - gulped down content - no single wipes on any "new" mechanic. Not even in harder beasts trails or new ones....
Lv 50 Road to Ishgard - a beautiful and changed dynamic raid to protect ishgard... fully changed to normal Main Scnenario encounter

If in HW the same changes apply I am not sure for how long I will be a returned player....

[Carin-Eri]

That said, the discourse over the idea that Final Fantasy 14 doesn't cater to the hardcore or no-lifer MMO player is odd, because I'm one of the most casual and low-skill people here and yet I've struggled to find things I can do because the game keeps getting harder but I'm not getting better.

I'm in the same boat as you here.

[Daralii]

Returning player here. Do not remember to which Expension I played. But I started with a fresh account (xbox) and my partner all over and I am quite shocked from time to time how even in ARR the designe changed to NOT work with other people...

Lv 50 Main Scenario Raids - gulped down to a normal Main Scenario encounter and a few 4 player dungeons available for NPC Helper
Lv 50 Road to Ishgard - gulped down content - no single wipes on any "new" mechanic. Not even in harder beasts trails or new ones....
Lv 50 Road to Ishgard - a beautiful and changed dynamic raid to protect ishgard... fully changed to normal Main Scnenario encounter

If in HW the same changes apply I am not sure for how long I will be a returned player....

EW in particular dedicated a lot of resources to "the single player experience" as Yoshida put it, which was cutting down most dungeons/trials and making them doable with trusts.

[Sorainthy]

EW in particular dedicated a lot of resources to "the single player experience" as Yoshida put it, which was cutting down most dungeons/trials and making them doable with trusts.

Thanks. In this case I do know in which Expansion I ended XD

[Hallarem]

I don't know which genius decided it was good to focus on singleplayer gaming in an MMO, but here you go. Yoshi-P's / and the boards focus on farming gaming trends/popular game references/trying to capture as many "new players" as possible has ended up into a chimera of a game that can call no place home. It lacks identity and integrity in a lot of aspects, the story and worldbuilding were the last to get a bullet in the two most recent expansions.

Now I read Square Enix is restructuring AGAIN, with a focus on "quality over quantity" and releasing and strenghtening IP's and whatever buzzwords they are farming again to make the investors happy. Wanna guess if that will make FFXIV better? Probably not, we remain the cashcow that they can cash off on to make other games.

[brinn12]

People don't hardcore commit their entire lives to a single game anywhere near as much as they did back in the Halcyon days of WoW. That's been the big shift. One solitary game can't meet a demand for infinite and eternally-relevant content, unless the game is built entirely around the concept of 'player-generated content' to begin with.

I disagree. That loss didn't happen because of a shift in society, but because MMOs failed to capture the playerbase that still goes for hardcore hours: the younger generation. They're still out there, and they still play games all day. Of course, they eventually grow up and become working adults. If a company tries to make a game just for its veterans and still fail at that, once they quit, there is nothing left.

While it's hard to produce enough content to cover 12 months a year, current FFXIV is a complete opposite of that. We had to wait 11 months just to get an Operations Field — in Stormblood, we got it after 9 months following the same patch schedule. In Endwalker, we had no battle zone like that and relic steps were concluded instantly, so long as you saved tomes. It's so far from hardcore that even casual players started complaining and unsubbing. Going for extremes is never a good decision.

[Nana_Bear]

Just look at how the relics and daily quests evolved, or rather devolved.

ARR relic: basically a game in itself
EW relic: yeah just bring me stuff for 6000 poetics you can buy from the NPC one aetheryte teleport away from here.

Um, no. You're grossly mischaracterizing the EW relic quest. We had to play through the all prior Manderville and then the ones in EW, do several fights, and at the time, gather some specific NON-poetics to buy the materials for various upgrades. (Which like a lot of other things they've now switched to poetics as game advances.)

Took a chunk of time and commitment, but I'll grant you it wasn't the utter crapfest of "put an entire game's worth of time and work into just getting ONE level of ONE weapon... and then here you go, several MORE levels to do the same for" that ARR and HW require.

A family member wanted to group-do the ARR relics. I got as far as getting through the initial round of fates from all over, collecting the special stones that *sometimes* drop, turn in, get the relic---then I got to the books level. And found out just how much time and effort I'd have to pour into getting ONE book done, much less multiples... and that there were several more levels of weapon after that. Hard nope. Another family member (with enormous capacity to mindlessly grind things forever) DID go through all that, and more power to him... but not me.

I hate the ARR (and HW, because he told me about progressing through those as well) relic quests: they're designed to "keep people busy, drain time and funds from players with an excess of both," and I'm not enamored of the weapon looks, either. I also hate PoD, which is another place you can eventually get "glowy" weapons.

So, with the EW quests involving Manderville, to finally get a cool glowy weapon (and the version to stick in glam chest) plus it being one we could *allot* some of the point distribution for on the actual weapon, was awesome.

The people complaining that "others got a cool glowy weapon without committing 2 years of their life and their firstborn child in order to get it," sound like my cronies complaining kids no longer have to walk uphill in the snow both ways, to get to school.

Bottom line: ARR and HW (and others, I would presume) relic quests are STILL the PitA you love so much, and anyone wanting those has to go through it. EW's being simplified and more straight-forward didn't take away one iota from the ones you love... but they sure were a nice option for those of us who DON'T want to grind forever and fifty years through multiple weapon levels just to get something that is pretty, glows, and very likely has already been out-classed, power-wise, by more recent weapon releases in other areas.