only 500k subscribers?

[Hyunckel]

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/squar...ribers/0143457

Update is 20 days old but says source is SE themselves

Updated: These MMO figures actually come from an original financial report that was filed on March 31st, 2014.

ten characters

[SgtPepperUK]

Teso has like 50% or more more subs, like 700-900k but still considered failure. I recall SWTOR went f2p even with above 1mil subs.

ESO's sub figures were never confirmed officially and I suspect at the time that guess was made ESO was probably closer to 400k.

I believe SWTOR was at 700k sub when it made the change.

As for FFXIV, 500k subs in a market that has become hostile to that payment model is pretty damned good.

[kyuven]

The first EverQuest game lived and breathed for many, many years on about as many subscribers as FFXIV has now, and they didn't even have to compete with market saturation.
500k doesn't sound like a lot, but keep in mind how oversaturated the market is, and that games with more tend to be F2P models where they cant legitimately count anyone who has ever made an account and logged in ONCE "active."

Also TESO and SWTOR may have had that many subscribers at one time, but any analyst worth their salt would take a look at how many they LOST from one month to the next to project how the game would do. SWTOR, for example, is a great game to play for a single month til you beat it. Not so great to keep coming back to except for content updates.
FFXIV, meanwhile, may have fewer subscribers than SWTOR did at that time, but the numbers are likely very stable in comparison and the game itself actually works and works well (TESO and SWTOR both had more bugs than a new york apartment in summer) compounded with the fact that the development team's biggest gripe against them has been...housing prices and a cash shop.
And that's all I'll say about those two because they're not the topic here :P

[Vaer]

Their team size seems pretty small based on what they said at fanfest so 500k doesn't seem like they are hurting that bad, and I see tons of Sleipnirs around, gold/platinum weddings are being sold and money from fantasia.

[Thayos]

SE also doesn't feel the same pressures to repay third-party companies for the creation of the game. Sure, there are shareholders, but that's a different kind of relationship. SE and Blizzard are fortunate to have this kind of financial leverage with their games.

[Arkista]

SE makes at least $6.5mil a month off of 500k paying subscribers, $78 mil a year with a minimum of 500k subscribers paying $12.99 a month. How much does it cost to run this game for a whole year including employees?

[Starlord]

SE makes at least $6.5mil a month off of 500k paying subscribers, $78 mil a year with a minimum of 500k subscribers paying $12.99 a month. How much does it cost to run this game for a whole year including employees?

I am not sure, but what I am sure off is it should be less that 78 mil. Especially since FFXIV ARR team is small now.

[Zenaku]

SE makes at least $6.5mil a month off of 500k paying subscribers, $78 mil a year with a minimum of 500k subscribers paying $12.99 a month. How much does it cost to run this game for a whole year including employees?

Less seeing how a big % of the player base are legacy users where i only pay 9.99$ a month. For 8 char slots per world for 40 overall i can make. Pretty much i'm getting the 14.99$ payment for 9.99 a month.

[Tagihi]

AND if they have 500k+? who cares, i play on a very busy server and iknow there server who are even more busy then other.
I think XIV i still an succeeded mmo after Wow who been out longtime now.
Back in 2004 there was not many mmo to play and it was sort of a new era and ofc blizzard won a huge number of players.
Lets say wow start 2013 they would not have that number of active sub like they have today.
10 yeras has change game industry a lot.

[Able]

I played Eve Online for ten years. Don't think it ever had more than 500,000 subscribers. And, it never mattered to me. I never had trouble finding players.