Seriously SE???

[Raist]

c'mon give me an estimation more concrete, realistic and convincing than mine.
I can't be completely wrong here.

Well, as a company they directly employ just under 3600 people (http://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/company/outline.html)

Corporate Profile
Company Name 	SQUARE ENIX HOLDINGS CO., LTD.
Established 	September 22, 1975
Headquarters 	SHINJUKU EASTSIDE SQUARE 6-27-30 Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo
160-8430, Japan 	

    MAP

Representative Director 	Yosuke Matsuda, President and Representative Director
Stock Ticker Information 	The First Section of Tokyo Stock Exchange(9684)
Common Stock 	15,368 million yen
(As of March 31, 2014)
(Number of Shares Issued and Outstanding) 	(115,575,696)
(As of March 31, 2014)
Net Sales 	155.0 billion yen

    Digital Entertainment 94.6 billion yen
    Amusement  47.0 billion yen
    Publication  10.2 billion yen
    Merchandising  3.8 billion yen

(Fiscal year ended March 31, 2014)
Number of Employees 	3,581
(As of March 31, 2014)

Note their revenue figure in there (155B yen, or ~1.3B USD). According to their own financial statements they profited just under 11B yen from 31 March, 2014 to 31 December, 2014. That works out to just over 90M USD in profit for the last 9 months of 2014. That was after shelling out over 5B Yen (~45M USD) in taxes alone. They also had over 16B yen (~13M USD) in combined liabilities to account for. You can review the reports yourself if you want:

http://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/

Percentage-wise, they aren't retaining a gross amount of revenues if you compare the figures to other players in the industry.

[Moqi]

ITT: whiny greedy little babies.
god forbid people actually get paid for working. how dare they.

Please, they don't even use 100% of the subs to finance the game, don't act like they don't already, we're paying them every month. We're financing FFXV too and who knows how many other game in addition to their stipends.

[ShiloEET]

pre-order digital download stardard edition 39.99 ???

that is more then to official game was on release... 29.99 i was ok with but this is getting a bit too high i believe. i have been here since beta phase for 2.0. played 1.0 since alpha and over 6 years in ffxi ...

but this price is a bit high for a digital download expansion.

This game was only $25 because it is a re-release of a game from 2010. This game is version 2.0 for a reason.

[Moqi]

What in what we have seen in Heavensward looks recycled?

Au ra are reskinned Miqo'te. They surely didn't put much effort into making yet another "humans with weird ears and a tale" race.

[CGMidlander]

Au ra are reskinned Miqo'te. They surely didn't put much effort into making yet another "humans with weird ears and a tale" race.

You're making that assumption based off what, exactly? The superficial details you glanced from the trailers?

Until we see the quality of lore written about them, the amount of new and unique movements that have been motion captured...etc. , it'd be unfair to assume.

[Moqi]

You're making that assumption based off what, exactly? The superficial details you glanced from the trailers?

We have artworks and models, it's really not just an assumption. Lore and animations have nothing to do with sticking a bunch of dragon ears and a tail on a jailbait and calling it a day. Coming up with that look wasn't a 40$ effort, you can tell that much already.

[CGMidlander]

We have artworks and models, it's really not just an assumption. Lore and animations have nothing to do with sticking a bunch of dragon ears and a tail on a jailbait and calling it a day. Coming up with that look wasn't a 40$ effort, you can tell that much already.

Lore and animation most certainly do have importance in differentiating races.

Otherwise, Miqo'te are just Hyur with cat ears and tails right?
Roes are just resized Hyur with different skin colour?
Elezen are really tall Hyur with pointy ears and small heads.
Lalafell are small, fat Hyur, I guess.
Au Ra are Hyur with scaly patches, a tail, and dragon horns.

Damn, SE is so uncreative with all these bipedal races.

[Moqi]

Lore and animation most certainly do have importance in differentiating races.

Visually, they don't. That's what I'm talking about but you keep bringing up lore like it's got anything to do with it. Mi'qote too are humans cat ears, yes. It's lazy and cheap, we had them and Padjal already, for 40$ they'd better put more effort in it. You can justify it lore-wise anyway you want, but female Au ra still look like a bunch of 17 year girls at a Mean Girls halloween party.

a lot more may be going into this than you realize.

Big whoop, it's their job. It's not like I'm paying SE every month for them to do exactly that...

[Raist]

We have artworks and models, it's really not just an assumption. Lore and animations have nothing to do with sticking a bunch of dragon ears and a tail on a jailbait and calling it a day. Coming up with that look wasn't a 40$ effort, you can tell that much already.

Have you ever tried to render custom animations on a computer? Much less 3D models? A lot of time can go into designing and testing the models to try to safeguard against anomalies. You never know just what the impact of altering the wire frame of a character may have on additional layers that must be applied to it--especially when those existing assets may not have been designed with flexibility that would account for the new wire frame modifications. A slight alteration in the core shape of an object can cause some really strange glitches down the line when other things are made to interface/interact with it.

And then there is all the peripheral content as was already mentioned. Story, missions, voice acting, new motion capturing.... a lot more may be going into this than you realize.

[Zakka]

40 bucks for a game is a steal these days,

I will be ordering it once it get a little closer to release date. xD