I guess it's time

[ZorySantill]

http://www.siliconera.com/2013/11/06...tasy-xis-peak/

This was 3 years ago almost.

[Vantol]

http://www.siliconera.com/2013/11/06...tasy-xis-peak/

This was 3 years ago almost.

Yeees ...
1. That's "paid subscribers", not the profit from game lifespan. Now let's sit and watch FFXIV to last for 14 years (not).
2. If you read this thread, there are calculations, that by 2015 this number droped to 200k subscribers. And that would be one of the reasons this thread (and many others) exist.

P.S. Also this article actually says, that out of 1.45 million people who bought this game, only 600k (<50%) decided to keep playing after free month. On release. Considering all those tomes and dungeons being fresh and interesting, full of hope and promises. That sounds to me like horrible result.

[ZorySantill]

Yeees ...
1. That's "paid subscribers", not the profit from game lifespan. Now let's sit and watch FFXIV to last for 14 years (not).
2. If you read this thread, there are calculations, that by 2015 this number droped to 200k subscribers. And that would be one of the reasons this thread (and many others) exist.

P.S. Also this article actually says, that out of 1.45 million people who bought this game, only 600k (<50%) decided to keep playing after free month. On release. Considoring all those tomes and dungeons being fresh and interesting, full of hope and promises. That sounds to me like horrible result.

Assuming that FFXI had 600k subscribers for all 14 years (completely absurd assumption but lets go with it) it comes out to $15 a month, multiplied by 14 years, multiplied by 12 months, or roughly $100 million.

Looking exclusively at box sales, reported 5 million accounts created as of July 2015, lets assume they went for about $30 average counting sales and so on. 5 million accounts times $30 per account is $150 million. Already more than 14 years of FFXI, and that's not counting a single subscription, nor is it counting any purchases of Heavensward, or even sales for someone playing PS3 upgrading to PS4, or to PC and so on.

[Vantol]

Allright, but FFXI wasn't free to download. So add here box sales, 5 expansions and 6 addons. And also link to those "5 millions".

Anyway, that's not the point. The point is that FFXI wasn't even close as bad as you want it to look, even from profits point of view (though, there are great games that don't make money, and horrible games that make hundreds of millions).

Also: 600k bought FFXI, 600k played FFXI for 14 years (or whatever the number is). 5 millions bought FFXIV, 200k played FFXIV for 3 years. What are we even discussing here?

P.S. There was actually a chart with FFXI subscribers if someone isn't as lazy as me to find it

[Gumbercules]

oh wow! ill bite.....wheres this data of 600k players playing ff 11 for 14 years? I liked FF 11 well enough but a niche game is a niche game XD

[Vantol]

According to this article: http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/squar...ribers/0143457

March 31st, 2014
FFXI+FFXIV+DQX: nearly 1,000,000 paying subscribers
FFXIV: paying subscribers sits at 500,000, with over 2.5m registered users

But to be thruthful I think it's just badly worded. Considering header I would say that both FFXI and FFXIV have had ~500k subscribers (now FFXIV has much less of course).

[Cakekizyy]

According to this article: http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/squar...ribers/0143457

March 31st, 2014
FFXI+FFXIV+DQX: nearly 1,000,000 paying subscribers
FFXIV: paying subscribers sits at 500,000, with over 2.5m registered users

But to be thruthful I think it's just badly worded. Considering header I would say that both FFXI and FFXIV have had ~500k subscribers (now FFXIV has much less of course).

That would be less than 500k split between FF XI and DQ X. How does that say 600k for FF XI?

[Gumbercules]

fair enough, last time i researched it some was around the time of the server mergers and then it was "estimated" to be around 250k stable subs (very successful numbers for an MMO if you don't wow fanboi it) Keep in mind that as far as I know SE has never released official active sub numbers in any MMO franchise, including 14 and 11.

Getting on topic, ff 14 is at its core a very casual game, and I do believe it could stand for some push towards more middlecore content, preferably aimed at larger groups. On that note though, I never wanna see them abandon systems flat out like WoW did with their latest xpac, which is why i personally find it reassuring to hear them having future plans for things like Diadem. Don't get me wrong FF 11 system wise has great additions, and imo some of those have/are making their transition into ff 14. They are just not going to transition into ff 14 in an exact replica though.

quick edit: that link just sent me to a dead end.

[Thayos]

If I had a dollar for everyone who has ever said, "FFXIV is going to die if blah blah blah doesn't change..."

Yes, the population always declines at the end of patch cycles, and it also declined toward the end of 2.x. But whenever the big patch hits, or the expansion hits, everyone comes back. And I bet a lot of those people don't even cancel their subs... they're just playing other games while waiting for the new content.

I've never seen any interview or data saying the game has fewer than 500k active subs, btw. And on Hyperion, I see no visual evidence that would lead me to think anything is in decline.

The game is going to be fine. It has its audience, and the development team is continuing to spice things up. We have years and years to look forward to.

[Ryel]

Yes, the population always declines at the end of patch cycles, and it also declined toward the end of 2.x. But whenever the big patch hits, or the expansion hits, everyone comes back. And I bet a lot of those people don't even cancel their subs... they're just playing other games while waiting for the new content.

And yet for a subscription based MMO this should never actually be the case.

The entire point behind a subscription model is that you're paying not only for regular updates but also a steady stream of interesting activity (this is subjective), there are f2p and b2p games on the market that are currently matching the pace of play that XIV is currently providing and this shouldn't really be the case.

If a large numbers of players are consistently declining in activity for predictable periods every single patch i would say that's something that warrants investigation as our subs don't magically lower themselves to match this decline, yet features like housing require us to remain bound to the game no matter what the state of content currently is.

It's also been observed by many, that a large number of players who leave during these slow periods aren't actually coming back or if they are they're only doing so during the free login periods and not actually re-subbing, the irony is that you're posting in a thread where the OP is quite literally giving reasons as to why they're unsubscribing from the game with many agreeing with and following suit because of those reasons.

I've never seen any interview or data saying the game has fewer than 500k active subs, btw. And on Hyperion, I see no visual evidence that would lead me to think anything is in decline.

No company actually does this, in fact standard practice is to -not- release numbers when they start to decline. Someone actually did post the results of the unofficial census earlier in this thread that actually did illustrate a massive decline in subs around the period of 3.0-3.1

The game is going to be fine. It has its audience, and the development team is continuing to spice things up. We have years and years to look forward to.

There are many players from that audience also voicing concerns with the content as a whole, or are those complaints somehow worth less than others?