Strong Final Fantasy XIV Sales Lead Square Enix to Financial Turnaround

[shadowmagus]

From all of us that's been playing ARR, you're welcome.

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I am surprised that FF14 ARR is doing pretty well, I might check it out once it inevitably goes free to play.

You shouldn't wait that long. A decade is a really long time if FFXI is any indication.

Wouldn't pat yourself on the back that much, everyone knows the funds to fix XIV came from the FFXI players subscription fees.

I fail to see what relevance that has on ARR being a good game that people should play? If people want to hate on it because it's an MMO, I'm just trying to cure them of their ignorance. The point is, Free to Play isn't coming anytime soon and I'm sorry if that idea offends folks.

 

[Colt47]

FFXIV ARR definitely wont go F2P, though Yoshida and company are currently inferring they are going to follow in World of Warcrafts footsteps and monetize things like pets and mounts. It's another flavor of the month Themepark MMO much like Wildstar and ESO are going to be, differentiated by pacing and both visual and quest related aesthetics. Most people will probably be done with ARR in about half a year.

 

[Trishbot]

Actually XIII-2 sold quite well for a spinoff. It was one of the two games in Fiscal year 2011. Lightning Returns is selling okay.

I could go into a long rant over the FFXIII series, but I'll try to be simple.

FFXIII-2 was profitable for a "spin-off", that is true, and I won't deny it. It still took nearly two full years to sell 2 million copies, however, but it was made using 80% of the assets FF13's development didn't have a place for. However, considering FFXIII sold around 6 or 7 million, I believe, it had a drop-off rate of nearly 60-70%.

Lightning Returns, however, didn't exactly sell "okay". It was marketed to be their "big" Final Fantasy release this quarter, the finale to the whole trilogy, and heavily adapted with more action to appeal to the west and a wider audience.

LR was instead outsold by Bravely Default and the decade-old port of FFX in several key territories. Its launch week sales were a whopping 70% less than FFXIII-2's were. The series didn't grow; it shrank by a huge margin. For perspective, the widely reviled Dirge of Cerberus spin-off outsold LR. Most franchise get bigger and better over time, while the FF13 series got less favorable reviews and less sales. FFXIII-2 was already a fraction as successful as FFXIII, and LR is only a fraction as successful as FFXIII-2.

Now, to be fair, LR was made on a much cheaper budget than the other games (and it looks cheaper all around), but it was supposed to be Square Enix's biggest game of the quarter... and instead got trounced by the likes of Tomb Raider's re-release, the FFX ports, Bravely Default, and the surprising success of A Realm Reborn.

 

[DirgeNovak]

This, combined to the fact FFX HD and Bravely Default outsold that Lightning Returns shit makes me more confident that FFXVI might actually be *gasp* a fucking Final Fantasy game.

FFXIV's story is very reminiscent of good FFs, and Square now finally realized that JRPGs are more popular than the shit they've made for an entire console generation.