Whats the new Dev teams time limit?

[Zanfire]

I've said this time and time again... people love a good train wreck...

The game will sell well on PS3... that is a foregone conclusion....
The Japanese PS3 numbers alone will be higher than the worldwide PC numbers
But the fixes and additions they are doing now will determine how many people stay with the game...
And that is something I just can't predict

I dont think anyone can, i have personally never seen any MMO in this situation, so its all up in the air. After 1.18 or at least the summer set of patches are done (the big overhauls) i would expect a lot more out of them since they have supposedly layed down their personal groundwork. Up til now its been unbareably slow, with little to show and a chunk of it not being very good or half baked ("lets make it bigger!" ring any bells)

[Rydin]

I dont think anyone can, i have personally never seen any MMO in this situation, so its all up in the air. After 1.18 or at least the summer set of patches are done (the big overhauls) i would expect a lot more out of them since they have supposedly layed down their personal groundwork. Up til now its been unbareably slow, with little to show and a chunk of it not being very good or half baked ("lets make it bigger!" ring any bells)

This game is breaking new ground also...
the PS3 MMO market is largely untapped... the Japanese MMO market is largely untapped
Monster Hunter is HUGE in Japan... even on Wii many people are going online to play....
The console MMO market is ripe for penetration...
Whether SE can do it with FFXIV... I don't know... none of us do...
To the people that say it wont do well... The research suggests that it definitely still has a chance

Imagine if the game launched on PC after 1.8 instead of back in 2010... You think more people would have stayed?

[Dreamer]

One thing that people seem to be completely overlooking is the fact that they're doing a dual-development cycle. Meaning that all the changes they're making have to be made for both the PC and PS3 platform, unless they want to kill a bunch of time later going to back to redo all of this for the PS3 version. In addition, you can also bet that many of the changes they're having to make also effect the Crystal Toolset (or whatever it's called). In essence, they're having to design/build/implement/debug on three different fronts.

The good news, however, that like they've said, once this is done, future updates should be much more rapid than what we're seeing now. Things like new dungeons, raids, quests, etc should all be fairly quickly after they've finished with the primary problems plaguing the game.

[Ava]

I wanted to know what the stakes are for the dev teams:

1) How long are the big guys up stairs giving you to turn this game around before they want to start charging? When would you want to if there is none?

2) what kind of limits are holding you back (team size, budget restrictions)

3) Would they let this game get shut down if its not doing well soon?

After i saw the thing about another MMO coming and that they wanted to have "2-3" big MMOs running, it made me question how much the big guys are willing to spend (time/money) on this game.

id seriously like to hear what the devs thoughts are with some solid answers. Im sure other players would too, because right now, this MMO not doing well and other BIG games on the way, its hard to stay tuned to a game thats still barely on its feet after 8-9 moths of constant patches.

I highly doubt they will shut the game down. Worst case scenario I'd imagine is the game going f2p with microtransaction support. If you look at the recent statements from SE and the statistics for gaming in general, microtransactions ARE the future. I hate it, but I can't deny the numbers. f2p with microtransactions has become incredibly popular recently (moreso recently than in the past). I would probably stop playing if that were to happen because I disagree with microtransactions in MMORPGs, but SE (along with other large companies like EA and Activision) report DLC/microtransactions as their highest profiting area.

[kukurumei]

tl;dr SE isn't losing any more money on this game than they have on every other game they've released

That's not true, as a developer once said on record, it's pretty much 90% hype in the gaming business. This is what is number crunched to be the projected revenue return.

That is now gone and possibility an even smaller team then before release.

They are never going to make that back, never, so in a sense, they have "lost" the money. It's not totally logical, but that's how accounting works. Projected cost and revenue are still on the books costs and revenue.

In the end, it's a bigger mental blow then anything. The brand name is critically important to SE. That's also how the gaming industry works, and why your halos and CoD and everything else can sell millions of people that basically "don't know crap" about it. If they can't sell and redeem FF14, then all future FFs are going to suffer.

And that's literally billions in the long run...assuming there is a future.

[Rydin]

That's not true, as a developer once said on record, it's pretty much 90% hype in the gaming business. This is what is number crunched to be the projected revenue return.

That is now gone and possibility an even smaller team then before release.

They are never going to make that back, never, so in a sense, they have "lost" the money. It's not totally logical, but that's how accounting works. Projected cost and revenue are still on the books costs and revenue.

In the end, it's a bigger mental blow then anything. The brand name is critically important to SE. That's also how the gaming industry works, and why your halos and CoD and everything else can sell millions of people that basically "don't know crap" about it. If they can't sell and redeem FF14, then all future FFs are going to suffer.

And that's literally billions in the long run...assuming there is a future.

Don't you think people love a train wreck though? people will get the game on PS3 so at the very least, they can join in the hate....
Not only that, but a 35+ FAMITSU score guarantees at least 500k in Japan alone...
I agree that a good PC launch would have meant 1 million on PC and at least 2 mill worldwide on PS3 (With many people staying after the free month)
but all is still not lost and the game can reposition itself to be popular... just requires more work and definitely a lot more marketing now