Seriously SE???

[aisustrong]

number of the day:

with the subscription fees 3000 employees can earn 2167$ every month.

hmmm
http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living...ayCurrency=USD

Average Monthly Disposable Salary (After Tax) 2,225.76 $

my statement stands.

[Phe]

hmmm
http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living...ayCurrency=USD


my statement stands.

with the subscription fees 300 employees can earn 21667$ every month.
and you can't tell me more than 300 people are involved with ARR on a regular basis.

Seriously, even with a generous estimation i don't think personnel cost is more than 1,5m / month.
Let all other expenditures for ARR (servers, events, hardware, electricity, rentals...) be another 1,5m
- that's 3m of expenditures with a monthly income of 8m subscription fees and cash shop = 5m pure profit.

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

[MasamuneBranford]

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

Legacy players pay $10 per month. It's also cheaper to pay several months in advance. 8M is a lot for 500k players. But you're missing investment time. These games take like 5-10 years to develop before release (it can take years to recoup these expenses). Server costs are hugely expensive and they are located around the world. You've got rent space, buildings, utilities, property taxes, benefits paid to employees (health, dental, life insurance, pension, retirement), composers, liability insurance, marketing, HR, headhunter recruiters, income taxes (International, US Federal, State), franchise taxes, the list goes on and on. Ha - you're missing a boat load of expenses.

Income taxes alone fractions your numbers. I think you need to do a little bit more thinking.

[Phe]

These games take like 5-10 years to develop before release (it can take years to recoup these expenses).

Let's not forget the ARR game sales. 30m?

even with what you have added. I'd eat my hat if ARR doesn't bring in double of what it costs each month.
We won't ever know for sure tho.

My opinion is basically that this game is way, i mean WAY in the profit zone and thus i consider 40 bucks a bit high for that it even WILL contain 1.0 recycled areas.

[MasamuneBranford]

Let's not forget the ARR game sales. 30m?

even with what you have added. I'd eat my hat if ARR doesn't bring in double of what it costs each month.
We won't ever know for sure tho.

My opinion is basically that this game is way, i mean WAY in the profit zone and thus i consider 40 bucks a bit high for that it even WILL contain 1.0 recycled areas.

Are you saying 30m copies?

[Phe]

Are you saying 30m copies?

30m$ from 1m copies.
>50m$ more realistic tho.
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/67805...eborn/67744170

[Raist]

30m$ from 1m copies.
>50m$ more realistic tho.
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/67805...eborn/67744170

You do realize that there was a large portion of players that migrated to 2.0 for free.... and periodically BOTH 1.0 and 2.0 went on sale for considerably less than the list price right? I saw 2.0 frequently up on newegg and other sites for $20 both shortly before and after the relaunch. Not to mention the odd Steam sales and such that crop up from time to time. Just saying.. you can't just do simple math like $30 list price X 1M users.

They also have to account for distribution costs for those sales as well--even for digital distribution, there is a cost they incur even if it is indirect. Bandwidth is not cheap. Stamping, packaging, and shipping product costs money.

You seem to be looking at the price tag and assume that is profit (or at least the bulk of it). You'd be surprised how much loss some companies actually take selling a product up front in order to make money on the back end in order for you to continue using that product. Look at consoles, printers, and computers for example. They practically give you the hardware in comparison to the cost to eventually get the product to the shelf (not just production/shipping mind you, there is also the long cycles of R&D, testing, marketing, etc.). But, they get money back through the consumable items and additional licensing as you spend money to use them after you buy them.

[kyuven]

and you can't tell me more than 300 people are involved with ARR on a regular basis.

Trust me, there's more than 300 people involved. 300 people may just be the in-house staff. There's still the likes of temp agencies for CS, accountants, and legal, all of which are probably shared with Square-Enix's other divisions. Just handling the international support for the game would require a minimum of 3 different offices (JP, NA, EU) and about 100 personnel for each one. Granted most of these personnel take in far less money than, say, the development team, but there still needs to be a lot of them to meet the needs of the playerbase. There needs to be phone support, email support, website support, and in-game support for more than 5 dozen servers. And they need representation from English, Japanese, Spanish, French, German, and likely many other languages.
Yeah, CS is a mess.
Then there's taxes, and the accounting departments, and the legal team.
Basically the FFXIV's calculated "5m pure profit" gets shredded to pieces when you start chopping it up for taxes and paying for additional offices/services. And that's before getting into other contracts.
Let me put it this way: If it were as profitable as you're implying, why are there so few P2P MMOs left?
"doing the math" is no substitute for simple logic in this case.

[Noshpan]

Let me put it this way: If it were as profitable as you're implying, why are there so few P2P MMOs left?
"doing the math" is no substitute for simple logic in this case.

It's not that they aren't profitable, it's that the global economy is still in such a shit state right now. As to the "why's" of that is a topic for a different discussion, which can get stupidly heated because of the divisive nature of politics these days.

[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.