FF14: ARR! World class MMOs? Must be Free to play, League of Legends! enough said .

[Preypacer]

You are massively overestimating how many subs a subscription fee based MMO needs to have. If you've got a few hundred thousand, it's more than enough--even more would be better, but it's enough.

Indeed they are.

Check out this blurb...

In December 2003, Square Enix president Yoichi Wada announced that there were over 200,000 subscribers to Final Fantasy XI, allowing the company to break even and start making a profit.

- Original Source

FFXI broke even a little over 1.5 years after its launch. It will take XIV longer than that, obviously, as it's essentially been developed twice now and has a higher "break even" point. But if the game is solid and fun and keeps people playing, they can definitely break even and become profitable with XIV as well, without having to go the F2P route.

And let's look at the numbers stated... 1.5 years at only 200,000 players for XI to break even. It went on to maintain over 500,000 for several years, over twice their target figures. In other words, FFXI has been a major cash-cow for SE for almost a decade. Even now, all these years later, they're still hovering at around 300,000 players, so they're still beyond what their initial "break-even" point was.

So, does anyone really think that hitting even 300-500k consistent paying players would be bad? I mean, beside the people who would ignore that data and want to make it sound like F2P is "the only way FFXIV could succeed"....