Money this game makes

[Zaniel]

There is some astounding lack of business knowledge in this thread. Every company on the planet funnels some level of funds back into new projects. FF14 wouldn't exist unless it was subsidized by SE's other games' profits. Are you going to complain about giving returns to shareholders or perhaps pay to staff next?

Most entertainment media including movies and games relies on like a 70/20/10 ratio, 70% of what they make will get a lackluster response and probably lose money, 20% will be successful and turn a decent profit, 10% will be the blockbusters that fuel the company future. Because it's entertainment and not an exact science you can't be sure of where the dice will fall until they do. Failure in entertainment is high, like restaurants, most go out of business and anyone who thinks this sort of business is 70% success is deranged. Sony Entertainment or Warner Bros or 20th CF will make far more dud movies than blockbusters.

[IckeDerTyp]

Obviously all the money goes into the Yoshi-P sammich fund!

Jokes aside tho, am certain atleast a fraction gets reinvested into 14! ^^

[hagare]

There is some astounding lack of business knowledge in this thread. Every company on the planet funnels some level of funds back into new projects. FF14 wouldn't exist unless it was subsidized by SE's other games' profits. Are you going to complain about giving returns to shareholders or perhaps pay to staff next?

Most entertainment media including movies and games relies on like a 70/20/10 ratio, 70% of what they make will get a lackluster response and probably lose money, 20% will be successful and turn a decent profit, 10% will be the blockbusters that fuel the company future. Because it's entertainment and not an exact science you can't be sure of where the dice will fall until they do. Failure in entertainment is high, like restaurants, most go out of business and anyone who thinks this sort of business is 70% success is deranged. Sony Entertainment or Warner Bros or 20th CF will make far more dud movies than blockbusters.

it's the conundrum of needing job experience to get an entry job xD
Wonder if they think a new project from scratch suddenly generates funds.
Except crowdfunding of course. Then again, that's basically preorders

[Illmaeran]

I work in R&D; my department actually costs the company money on a day-to-day basis and requires funds generated by our sales team to function. It's only when we get a product to market that the company recoups the cost of our efforts. Game development works the exact same way; income from one project goes into the company pot to subsidize development of a follow-up product and/or an entirely new thing. Whether the new projects are profitable or not is irrelevant; the money's already been spent.

The fact that we're continuing to see new content releases in the game and expansion of hardware capabilities is clear proof that XIV's getting at least some of its money re-invested into it. I honestly hope that a fair portion of the profits eventually go into the development of a new FF MMO. Perhaps 10 years from now? I'm going to need a game to play during retirement.

[technole]

This should help some understand where MMO revenue stands in the larger picture, from the last SE investor earnings webcast. Sometimes people have a flawed picture, or seem to think FFXIV is their most profitable adventure or something. But that doesn't mean it's not consistently being invested in for the next 10 years. Mobile games always rake it in for SE.

[Illmaeran]

Given an average Yen to USD conversion of 100:1, that's an operating budget of roughly 494 million dollars for FY2022. For a business the size of SE, that doesn't seem like reasonable amount to me. Looking at the credits of XIV alone, they've got a LOT of people engaged in development, even if a number are contractors and not actual SE staff.

[EnigmaticDodo]

There is some astounding lack of business knowledge in this thread. Every company on the planet funnels some level of funds back into new projects. FF14 wouldn't exist unless it was subsidized by SE's other games' profits. Are you going to complain about giving returns to shareholders or perhaps pay to staff next?

Most entertainment media including movies and games relies on like a 70/20/10 ratio, 70% of what they make will get a lackluster response and probably lose money, 20% will be successful and turn a decent profit, 10% will be the blockbusters that fuel the company future. Because it's entertainment and not an exact science you can't be sure of where the dice will fall until they do. Failure in entertainment is high, like restaurants, most go out of business and anyone who thinks this sort of business is 70% success is deranged. Sony Entertainment or Warner Bros or 20th CF will make far more dud movies than blockbusters.

I understand that profits from any product has to pay people and get used to create more games, etc. I'm just concerned, at this current time, about 14 getting to keep it's fair share to continue to drive ITS development. I would prefer they double down on something that has been a continued success over these objective failures they like to churn out. I guess my issue is with the current direction of Square more than anything.

[Risvertasashi]

I understand that profits from any product has to pay people and get used to create more games, etc. I'm just concerned, at this current time, about 14 getting to keep it's fair share to continue to drive ITS development. I would prefer they double down on something that has been a continued success over these objective failures they like to churn out. I guess my issue is with the current direction of Square more than anything.

So, yeah, Babylon's Fall or whatever it was called looks awful and I'm also not keen on SE's enthusiasm for NFTs and so on.

Further, SE tends to have a cycle of running themselves into near bankruptcy before they figure out they need to come down from their ivory tower and make the games people want. In fact, that goes all the way back to the story of how the very first final fantasy was made, and FF14 has that story contained entirely within its own original release and then ARR too.

My suggestion: Buy the games that are good, don't buy the ones that aren't. Any time they get their heads too far up their own bums I just stop buying until they get good again. They do get the message eventually, they're just a very forgetful company, alas.

[StriderShinryu]

I'll preface this by saying that I agree it would be nice to see FF14 get a bigger budget and it does feel like in at least some aspects we are getting less content than we used to (regardless of how many power point slides they show).

I think there's a couple things to keep in mind here. First, even if FF14 did get a bigger slice of the pie, it wouldn't instantly translate into more content for FF14. SE could drop hundreds of millions of more dollars into Yoshida's lap tomorrow but he'd still have to go out and find the quality capable staff. They'd still have to train and onboard said staff. They'd still have to plan out and manage the content. They'd still have to actually create and test the content. Etc. It's not just a case of FF14 getting more money.

Second, as others have mentioned, it's a necessary business expense to put some if not most of the income from successful projects into other projects. Bear in mind that FF14 was one such failure not that long ago. It was a complete money pit that involved running a dead game while simultaneously developing a new one all while collecting no money from the people who were still playing the game. The game sucked up likely hundreds of millions of development dollars and many years of resources only be basically end up clogging up the office toilet. It was only through funding from other projects at the time that FF14 as we know it today exists.

Now, will Babylon's Fall or Chocobo GP be the next ARR? Probably not. Was Avengers a complete waste of time that should have stayed a single player game? Sure. Was there any way Balan Wonderland was going to be anything but a garbage fire? Yeah, I don't think there was any way to save that. But sometimes you do have to throw good money after bad.

[Risvertasashi]

I'll preface this by saying that I agree it would be nice to see FF14 get a bigger budget and it does feel like in at least some aspects we are getting less content than we used to (regardless of how many power point slides they show).

I think there's a couple things to keep in mind here. First, even if FF14 did get a bigger slice of the pie, it wouldn't instantly translate into more content for FF14. SE could drop hundreds of millions of more dollars into Yoshida's lap tomorrow but he'd still have to go out and find the quality capable staff. They'd still have to train and onboard said staff. They'd still have to plan out and manage the content. They'd still have to actually create and test the content. Etc. It's not just a case of FF14 getting more money.

Second, as others have mentioned, it's a necessary business expense to put some if not most of the income from successful projects into other projects. Bear in mind that FF14 was one such failure not that long ago. It was a complete money pit that involved running a dead game while simultaneously developing a new one all while collecting no money from the people who were still playing the game. The game sucked up likely hundreds of millions of development dollars and many years of resources only be basically end up clogging up the office toilet. It was only through funding from other projects at the time that FF14 as we know it today exists.

Now, will Babylon's Fall or Chocobo GP be the next ARR? Probably not. Was Avengers a complete waste of time that should have stayed a single player game? Sure. Was there any way Balan Wonderland was going to be anything but a garbage fire? Yeah, I don't think there was any way to save that. But sometimes you do have to throw good money after bad.

But the type of experimentation also matters.

Balan Wonderland is utterly bizarre, and sometimes radical departures from established game designs end up really catching on. It didn't here, it's just weird, but I can respect them for at least taking some creative risks in this way.

Babylon's Fall is an experiment on how mediocrely Square can slap together some proven game mechanics and try to fleece us for as much money as possible... while investing as little as possible in a quality experience. That, along with whatever NFT abominations await us in the future, is much much worse.

I can understand not wanting to support a company pursuing category 2 there. But for me personally, I'll just buy the stuff that's good and pass on the suspiciously brown and smelly ones.