Square Enix Expects Loss Of $140 Million

Mmo industry has been like that for a lonnnng time lol. The most successful mmo in the industry gets to stay, the rest gets shut down or maintenance mode. This is not a NCsoft thing. I can name dozens of Asian mmo companies that do the same thing for decades.

This applies to both private and publicly traded company. Many years ago when mmo was popular, I've seen plenty of private MMO companies in Asia kept shutting down low performing titles, then launch a new title only to shut it down 1-2 years later.

Keep in mind that the real money maker of NCsoft is lineage. This series is still alive in Asia since 1998, even the first game in the series. The mobile version easily top the charts in Korea, NCsoft never shut them down because they are so good at making money.

They're just trying to make themselves more attractive to Sony again.

It has, but as the people playing the games ages have increased to adults and not teenagers they have suffered more backlash from doing it. MMO players hold a grudge over closing down a game they played and got attached to like no being in the known universe.

Even EA refused to close down the star wars tor game and handed it off to a 3rd party, that should speak volumes. Even EA know what's up.

I don't think their AA titles were ever anything other than tech demos that they let someone write a story on top of until at least ps2. They saw a thing they could do, and first, and so they made brave fencer musashi, einhander, or the bouncer. Then the next AAA incorporated that things that went well and learned from what didn't. The AA were there to solidify gameplay or graphical techniques so that they could push out a AAA faster than everyone else at a higher level.

Mind you, they were really good tech demos.

I think their bigger problem is that there is no first anymore that they are willing to explore. There is no curve to get ahead of from a technical side. It's story telling, gameplay loop, and financially leveraging trends. Their formula no longer works and after ps4 the difference between AA and AAA was blurred enough that it didn't matter anymore. They have to compete with EVERYONE ELSE's IPs that grew up playing their games and seeing what was possible on SEs dime.

I don't think their previous success was built on passion, it was built on moving faster and putting out a more polished product than anyone else could achieve at the time. Now they are a large corporation that can't take risks and aren't nimble enough to pivot with markets in order to stay ahead. It was a good thing they sold off their western studios and it's a good thing that they are canceling bad projects and refocusing their efforts. They are terrible at couch co-op, they don't have a fortnite shooter, and their MMOs did well BECAUSE of the failures of others and a hopefully once in a lifetime pandemic. They need to figure out how they can connect their future with their reputation from that past because that's what they have going for them.

Can you imagine how much money they throw at Nomura and Kitase etc to keep them there and not leaving to setup their own companies, this is why the games cost so much probably. They are throwing sacks of money at the named people, and they are getting older and more out of touch with younger audiences and less passionate about their jobs. Imagine being a veteran game developer in your 50s and having to do a remake of a 20 year old game in 3 parts that take 10+ years. Who wants to do that, there is no enjoyment in that.

The reality of Square Enix is they are company kept alive by the 30+ demographic who grew up with their games, and all public companies hate this kind of demographic reliance. Investors want them to appeal to the zoomers who play fartnite, and they can't do it. If they try to appeal to them in current franchises, they alienate the core audience of 30+.

oMG HOW DID I KNOW ITS RADICAL ARCANA who posted this

Matusi did not leave Square but joined the Saga Team

Because, at least in the last few days, they are the ones posting all of the tangential FFXI news?

Demographic is 40+ at this point. They don't know how to do 30 and under at this point competitively.

And I would agree with the chess to checkers analogy used earlier. They used to be a chess company but their investors are no longer JP only so they had to switch to checkers.

Fixed that for you.

The same reason why I figured who is the one who types with caps lock activated (and tries to upper case with caps lock on)

Personal styles

FFXI will never die. It might die in the way you know it today, but the game itself will never die if SE decides to fold. I know for MANY that means jack squat but in the grand scheme of things, it IS a game not everyone has experienced (hence why we get new players here and there). I know no one wants to hear it but the fact remains, private servers will always hold the 75 code. That's a fact. Depending on the server devs and leadership depends how well the server functions but in either event, FFXI will never cease to exist in it's entirety. Nerds already copped these codes and it will live long after SE shuts it's doors. ......... and yes, you will start over and never break 75. But it's FFXI right?

Edit: inb4 Draylo shits on me for mentioning the dirty phrase "private servers". I'm just making a point.

Not to me, it's just a poor backwards engineered shadow of what FFXI is. If the real game goes down, then we really lost it. The real devs and contributors to what made ffxi so great, have no part in private servers and it has no authenticity except them copying ***, very poorly. Have yet to see a good attempt at replicating it without putting their lame nostalgia garbage. They also don't have the "code" so you are very mistaken. They barely have working ***past CoP for a reason.

Damn, i didnt even have time to post an edit lol

Exactly. Not to "you". But FFXI as a collective you hold so dear to your heart does not revolve around you my dude. There are 100k people both present and past that remember the game you do. Some for the present, some have that past nostalgia. Nothing wrong with either, but If you are going to bat for a game you are willing to die on this hill for, then you die for it in all aspects of it's phases. 75 era MADE YOU who you are today/// in a game you revere SO much. I get it man, I really do. But to say 75 PS's are trash is just wrong. Some yes, some no. If you have never even played one, then your argument is null and void and no one is taking you serious. Point is, If SE shut down tomorrow, the game will still exist whether YOU like it or not.

Denial is the first stage of grief

Retail it will. There is no denial here. And I've been playing this game as long as all of you. I just don't have blinders on.

Yeah it's an opinion, just like yours. That's just my opinion, it wouldn't be ffxi to me. I didn't suggest they stop it in any form, but I care more to preserve what we have and to me once it's gone, there won't be an ffxi. I do think all of them are trash, they have some with neat ideas and the effort is definitely noteworthy, but I would never recommend someone to play there, especially if they wanted to experience the real ffxi while it still exists.

The game has been out of 75 era for longer than it was ever in it. It's generated more profit in the time it's been out of 75 era than it was in. In all aspects it's been a complete improvement since those days in the complete sum of the years it's been out of 75 era vs in. So I don't revere those days like most of the p server crew, completely blinded by nostalgia.

IDK why people keep saying RIP FFXI, ***probably costs them next to nothing to run, especially with like 2 staff members. There's no way they'll ditch FFXIV's main source of income lol.

100% agreed

Yeah this game is just a money printing machine, it might not be a ton of money but it's a reliable positive revenue stream with ultra low maintenance costs. They are going to ride this for another decade.

I don't think FFXI is going anywhere for a while, either, but it's not as simple as "it makes profit still." Let's say it makes 50 million a year and costs only a little bit of effort to keep the servers up and 1-2 people to run updates or whatever. If they need those servers, server space etc. etc. for a new game though, they might decide that new game will make up that 50m+ and be worth ending it.

Would that be a stupid choice? Absolutely, but gaming/movie companies etc. are not known for good decisions lately, so anything is possible. Again, I don't think it's going anywhere for years though.

That's definitely the fear I have for XI. The leadership at Square-Enix only looks at the top line. They'll call a game that pulls in $10M a failure even though its budget was only $2M. But then they'll pop the champagne for a game that made $60M even though it cost $120M to make.

I want to say that not even Square-Enix would be so stupid as to pull the plug on XI, but Square-Enix are exactly the kind of stupid to do that.

That's not how infrastructure costs work, especially now a days. Nobody and I mean nobody does dedicated anything anymore, everything is virtualized or abstracted in a way that enables sharing of compute, memory, storage and I/O. FFXI is likely running on the same hardware that is running FFXIV, just in a different resource pool.

Which is what any modern Western company would do but this is Japan and SE so it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if the servers are dedicated still.

Square Enix are upgrading XI right now, to future proof it for windows 11. This is the kind of work only the developer is really going to be able to do. Also a big company running a game can apply pressure to retain features in new versions of windows (or driver creators such as nvidia) in a way some rinky dink can't.

https://www.siliconera.com/final-fantasy-xi-director-discusses-server-replacement-windows-11-support-we-are-vanadiel/

What do you think will happen if this work isn't done for windows 12, 13 or 14? do you think the plebs running private servers can fix these kinds of issues when they can barely add new content from an expansion released 15 years ago?

Imagine if there is wall to wall black screen crashes on windows 12 or the game won't start. This is why private server people are far too comfortable for their own good.

It's not like you can just stick with old versions of windows either, Microsoft are actively going against this and forcing upgrades now. Even Windows 10 is being retired in 2025, when they cease all support for it and demand everyone get 11.

The best thing they could do to make it easy to install and run is make it run on DirectX 12 or Vulkan.

They can use AI to upscale all textures without much manual labour to increase graphics quality while they're at it.

I had to wait like 5+ years for them to rebalance RDM post abyssea so that I really enjoyed it again. I'm not going to spend time on homebrew balance when for once in the history of the game it's pretty enjoyable. I'd always rather play now instead of any version of 75 era.

Sunk cost fallacy for sure, but also I can't go back to how slow the game was.