Final Fantasy XIV’s Original Launch Is Still Crippling Square-Enix

[Raistlin]

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Recently, Final Fantasy XIV Producer Naoki Yoshida admitted that another failure like FFXIV’s original launch could doom the company. This was not just hyperbole. A recent financial report from Square-Enix only confirms Yoshi-P's prediction, and this one is straight from SE’s Chief Financial Officer, Yosuke Matsuda. Despite being released over two years ago, the financial impact of FFXIV’s horrific failure are still being felt throughout the entire company.

Final Fantasy XIV was meant to build off of the huge success of Final Fantasy XI (the most financially successful Final Fantasy ever), and be a constant and safe source of income. In short: it wasn’t. Instead, FFXIV’s original failure meant that MMO as a category of games for SE is still yielding no money and operating at a loss -- which has resulted in a “negative chain of events” that impacted the entire company. Matsuda pointed to the delay in development of new HD games as just one example of this impact, and elsewhere in the report it’s noted that Square-Enix’s entire operating budget was literally cut in half last year and has remained low.

But there’s hope. With the recent launch of Dragon Quest X and the upcoming rerelease of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, Matsuda states that SE should start making money from MMOs again next year.

And if it doesn’t… well, let’s try not to think about that. But it does put a lot of SE’s actions and words from this year into perspective, especially the emphasis on putting the work in and getting things right with FFXIV the second time around, even if there are constant delays. SE has an invested interested in putting out a high-quality product and appealing to gamers this time around, because they might not get a third chance.

Source: Siliconera.

[Loony BoB]

Big words, tough words. I do however appreciate that DQX is apparently doing pretty well in Japan, so fingers crossed FFXIV is the next big thing in the MMO world. With a PS3 launch as well as PC relaunch, I'm optimistic.