Quote Originally Posted by NightHour View Post
Out of the money they make, the following has to be paid

etc etc
not all of what you listed relates to the project costs some of that is just business expenses and operation costs.

for Final Fantasy XIV an CBU3 they are allocated funds in the millions or even billions but alot of it goes into advertisement and merchandise and as you said server maintenance an repairs as well as paying salaries and training or hiring new staff to the various teams does factor into that cost. so too does buying software to create new assets, but even with that said that should still leave them with enough funds leftover to provide quality improvements to existing infrastructure
lets not also forget that the mogstation/cash store proceeds supposedly go towards development costs too as stated by naoki yoshida himself unless he was lieing that is to save face an avoid bad press etc.

even so they do have passionate devs on their teams who work out things without pay as was proven with the majong minigame and headgear fits for viera/hrothgar. things that were done in the developers spare time an with good will/intention.
so its not impossible just unlikely that they'd be able to devote so much too what is consider niche sidecontent even though we'd really like them too place more urgency or thought to player housing and its systems etc.