Square Says Final Fantasy XI Is Its Biggest Cash Chocobo

[John Funk]

Square Says Final Fantasy XI Is Its Biggest Cash Chocobo

Current FF11 players have spent 200,000 years in game.

Pop quiz: Which Final Fantasy game has made publisher/developer Square Enix the most money? If you answered Final Fantasy VII, BZZZT - nope! If you answered Final Fantasy XI, then you cheated and read the headline, didn't you? But yes, it's true: More than any other game in the long and storied JRPG series, FF11 has made its parent studio the big bucks.

This news comes from Square CEO Yoichi Wada, who praised the game's playerbase in his opening remarks for VanaFest 2012. "Looking at profitability, it's the top of all past FF games," he said. Given that fans have been paying money every month to play the game since its launch in 2002, that's not very surprising when you think about it.

Wada also said that the players who are currently active in Final Fantasy XI have played for more than 200,000 hours - and this doesn't count people who used to play but have let their subscriptions lapse. That's a tremendous amount of time spent in a virtual world, no matter how much of it was spent in hopeless 18-hour boss fights [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/85639-18-Hour-Final-Fantasy-XI-Boss-Induces-Puking].

So yes, a properly run MMO can rake in some serious real-life Gil; we all know this. It's why Wada announced Seekers of Adoulin, another expansion pack for the ten-year-old MMORPG, whereas Square Enix still hasn't remade FF7 - it just wouldn't be as possible.

It's also why the company went for another MMO with Final Fantasy XIV. <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/104445-Final-Fantasy-XIVs-Poor-Launch-Leads-to-Trial-Extension>That one didn't go as well, in case you've forgotten.

Source: Andriasang [http://www.famitsu.com/news/201206/23016877.html]

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[Lunar Templar]

lol

so 14 was an even bigger waste of every ones time and money then?

wow ....

square really is run by idiots XD

 

[IndomitableSam]

I was just thinking this weekend if FFXI or XIV went free-to-play I'd play. I played XI for a few years until real life happened and I couldn't schedule levelling groups or level for 3 hours straight without breaks. This was years before they made it so you could solo. I never tried XIV, kinda wanted to, until I saw how restrictive the world was and how there were corridors to travel instead of wide open spaces. Made me mad. ... And I can't believe XIV was 2010. Where did the last couple years go? I thought it was out last summer.

I'll still try them if they go F2P, but I kinda doubt that'll ever happen now.

 

[itsthesheppy]

I have fond memories of my Dragoon. That little dragon was adoooooorable.

 

[Eri]

XIV failed because everyone wanted an XI-2. What they got, was something else entirely.

Now, I was one of them, and I'm not saying I wanted a copy of XI with just shinier graphics, but I wanted them to take all they had learned and make a much smoother, more user friendly, newbie friendly (so less new players quit), and all around better game.

What they did was just a complete tragedy.

They gave no one what they wanted and blew any chance they had at making a truly profitable next MMO.

 

[newwiseman]

From what I remember of XI it was fun. I did only have 10 days with it though. I liked the multi-class system even if the leveling system left something to be desired. It had all the degree of time sink you could ever want from the crafting systems and their leveling schemes. The auction boards worked very well.

I really linked the city state waring for regions aspect, made questing and grinding in areas have more of a point.

What I didn't like was class unlocking, that shit was a waist of time. Grind a character just to take a mission to get the class you wanted to play as then change class and basically start the game over... BS. You could get a stat boost by making the class you had leveled a sub class but it was weak sauce.

Never played XIV but it looked pretty from the screens I saw.

 

[80Maxwell08]

Amusingly enough on Amazon it says I can get a copu of FFXIV, the tie in controller for it and (the best part) the FF XI ultimate edition. Awesome.

I can't comment on FFXI too much since I only played it for an hour or so. For what it's worth that hour was ok.

 

[Doom972]

I don't think it would've been so successful all by itself. It became so popular only because FF fans wanted more FF.

 

[Denamic]

I have fond memories of my Dragoon. That little dragon was adoooooorable.

I was a ninja tank.
It was fucking expensive.

 

[Brainst0rm]

"cash chocobo" makes me inexplicably happy, although they're functionally closer to horses than cows. "Kicking a dead chocobo" in an Escapist article would make me inexplicably happier. Make it happen, Mr. Funk.

 

[lockgar]

MMOs in general are a blight on gaming in general, and when you have results like this, its not likely they are going away anytime soon.

O don't get me wrong, MMOs can be fun, the problem is the market is already getting over bloated with MMOs as of late, and unlike other over saturated genres, MMOs don't usually end "unless it fails", and, as with the case of FFXI, many developers who would have been working on other titles can't be bothered, and you get gems like this.

"Final Fantasy XI is pretty much it for a while. We still have a lot of possible expansion packs we could do, and plenty of support to give. As far as Chrono is concerned, that's huge; but we can't do two or three things at the same time, and it's tough to do FFXI and another Chrono game at the same time or too close together. We'd love to do one though, but yeah, not yet. (2003-05-14)" Richard Honeywood

 

[grigjd3]

I think you have a typo unless I've misinterpreted something. Is the figure 200,000 hours or years - because one of those numbers is far more impressive than the other. I'll let you figure out which.

 

[TheRocketeer]

I've always said that FFXI is one of the best MMO's out there. MMO's aren't my thing, but my brother's played for years and years, and the stuff he's doing always sounds really, really fun- or at least he makes it sound that way, and if a game can let a person do that, it's succeeded.

The game is NOT very accessible to newbies, though, and while fixing this would have helped them out tremendously in the early days, I wonder if it would make a difference now; I can't imagine many people are running out and trying it for the first time after a decade online. At least not versus the number of die-hards keeping the servers blinking.

(On the other hand, as a huge fan of FFVII, can I just say it would make me very happy to not see it mentioned every single time the series or Square-Enix is mentioned?)

 

[lockgar]

I've always said that FFXI is one of the best MMO's out there. MMO's aren't my thing, but my brother's played for years and years, and the stuff he's doing always sounds really, really fun- or at least he makes it sound that way, and if a game can let a person do that, it's succeeded.

The game is NOT very accessible to newbies, though, and while fixing this would have helped them out tremendously in the early days, I wonder if it would make a difference now; I can't imagine many people are running out and trying it for the first time after a decade online. At least not versus the number of die-hards keeping the servers blinking.

(On the other hand, as a huge fan of FFVII, can I just say it would make me very happy to not see it mentioned every single time the series or Square-Enix is mentioned?)

I just have to add something here Manny. There is a difference between " NOT very accessible to newbies" and having an ass backwards interface. When you have to right click to enter your menu, and then select a target by moving the MOUSE left and right, you should probably re-examine your control scheme. I'm sure they had to have changed it by now, but when I tried it, instead of just clicking on an enemy I wanted to target, with my cursor I ether had to do that, or keep hitting the cycle through nearby enemy button, instead of simply just clicking on the guy I wanted to attack. I ended up having to plus in a ps2 controller, just so the controls actually made sense. I just know, after those first few hours, I never wanted to play it again, and I didn't think the game mechanics where bad at all, just the interface that went over it.

 

[Veldt Falsetto]

For an MMO that ISN'T WoW, Square have done amazingly well...

heck I'ma say it again, Square are just one amazing company that aren't afraid to try and push boundaries and still manage to push out good games

 

[devotedsniper]

It's not surprising 11 has so many hours in it, i alone put a year into the game on my main character (thats a total of all my gameplay hours, not just i played the game for a year, my character was on a server for 365+days in total while i played it for several years).

The only reason i quit was because they started changing it so much that it takes new players only a matter of weeks to get to level 50, back when i was getting up to that level it took a while, probably 3-4 times what it takes now, it put me off considering how hard i worked to reach max lvl and then these new people come in and can do it easily because of all these new changes.

 

[Beautiful End]

Make FFXI/XIV F2P and I'll join. Although by the looks of it, they don't need to. Well, at least in FFXI's case.

I've always been curious about those FF MMOs. I love FF but I'm not gonna pay a monthly fee for a game I might play like 3 times per week for a couple of hours. My job and school wouldn't allow it.

Anyway, I don't see why they didn't just do a FFXI-2 in the shape of FFXIV. People would have been happy and they would have made money. AND they would have already released the console versions a long time ago, thus making more money.

Sometimes I wonder about you, Square.

 

[antipunt]

the answer is FF11 obviously!

If you answered Final Fantasy XI, then you cheated and read the headline, didn't you?

..

>_>

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