Can someone clarify this " less than 1mill subs"

[Toranja]

I like how they just now published numbers for a year that ended in March last year, hence they're really 2013 numbers, typical SE doing things all backwards, if anything it's bad investor reporting though Polygon are equally bad on their own.

You know nothing of accountancy.

[Roris]

You know nothing of accountancy.

Why thank you Mr. Professional Accountant. I do know that fiscal years end on that date, what was weird is that investors out of all people weren't notified until now, but now someone clarified this is just making it available to the public in general so that explains that.

[Bluejay]

Just to point out that even if FF14 has only 1 million active subscribers that is $13,500,000 A MONTH in revenue for Square just from subscriptions (if you assume a mix of basic and expanded subscriptions). When you add additional fees from things like the Wedding service, revenue from paid expansions in the future, etc... that is plenty of money to keep this game supported and viable for a really long time.

[Enkidoh]

As others have said, that is out dated information that was probably inaccurate even at the time it was released - until recently SE actually had a banner on the main page of the Lodestone that mentioned how many players were playing FFXIV, which clearly increased with each content patch, and the last time it was seen (around October last year) had reached over 2 and half million players.

Curiously though, that banner has since been removed, although the trailer for the 2.4 patch actually stated it as well at the very end (found here - skip to the very end of the video at 8'07" to see the 'Over 2.5 Million Adventurers Worldwide!' proudly displayed under the game's logo.).

So, which is the truth? Only SE knows, but I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say it's probably still around the 2 and a half to 3 million players mark all up. But again, only SE knows for sure.

[Xatsh]

The info that site posted is meaningless honestly it is 8 months old which in terms of subcount could be the difference between +/- 400-500k subs in the mmo world.

XIV most likely does not have over 1mill subs in JP/NA/EU if it did grow that much we would of seen more servers being added which I do not think there was new ones opened. More then likely XIV sits around the 500-700k mark. If the game sold 2.5mill copies take 25% of that and that would probably be the high margin for our sub count.

I do not think the population outside china is really changing much. People are leaving and people are coming in at about even rates. Not good news but the game is stable for now. China from what I hear the game is failing hardcore (1.0 levels of fail) but that is all hearsay.

I think this expansion will determine if people stay or leave in mass. Alot are really pissed off about the pure linear design, quick negation, and over simplicity, but there is a opposite faction that would quit if they changed it up. So SE has to try to make both sides happy or they will lose one of the chunks of the playerbase.

[Ramen]

I believe 750k for XIV too. Also, long time ago, they already said they can survive with 200k sub. So, now with lots cash shop activities, they are doing pretty well still.

[Krr]

400k pessimistically, 750k optimistically.

For a subscription model MMO that's ironically enough to be second or third in the world. Market saturation, ahoy!

[Korilynn]

400k pessimistically, 750k optimistically.

For a subscription model MMO that's ironically enough to be second or third in the world. Market saturation, ahoy!

That was good to be in such a place long before market saturation.

[Krr]

That was good to be in such a place long before market saturation.

Hah, true. It just seems small because we're sitting next to, well, you know...WoW, and then every F2P giant.

Maplestory somehow has millions, despite being considered niche and inaccessible in the West. I'll never understand.

750k is a solid number in any case. Booms (and admittedly, their busts) come rapidly with expansions, too, which is why I'd reckon 2.5 and 3.0 are coming faster than expected.

[kyuven]

That was good to be in such a place long before market saturation.

I think in its heyday, EverQuest only had about 100-200k subscribers, and it was the biggest show in town (in the west) until WoW came along.
Any p2p game that breaks 500k subscribers is doing well. Even if the game stagnates at that number, it's not necessarily a bad thing since you really can't hope to get more of the market share than that. In fact it's probably because of the anticipated stagnation that we got the cash shop added: While steady numbers are very good for keeping something afloat, the suits upstairs only see that the numbers aren't increasing. Thus, getting your existing customers to pony up more cash is the preferred method.
In the old days of EQ1 and bleeding into EQ2, they did this by releasing expansions once or twice a year. This is why EQ1 has 20+ expansions. However, they began to realize this model didn't work very well, as customers flocked to games that gave content updates for free.
So, cash shops were born.