It's always amusing that whenever Final Fantasy is mentioned, it ends up a flamewar.
They can fix it all up nice and pretty, but the rush is gone. They've lost that opportunity to get the legs moving and it'll cost them in the long run. They didn't release a product that most people wanted or felt that was worthwhile, so they're paying for it.
Honestly, and this is not an attempt to bait, but I think part of the blame for the game lies with those diehard fans they expected to make up the core of the game. When they started up the open beta, who were the first people to run in and grab spots? The people who enjoy the games most, of course. As I've said in other posts, the bugs can be fixed...the design decisions not so much. People aren't just complaining about the bugs...it's the servers, the interface, how different things in the game work, a lot of different, little things that make or break it for some people. FFIX players are used to similar methods used in their games (not to mention people who think Final Fantasy and Square Enix can do no wrong) and they liked what they saw in the beta. They're used to it and SE appeared to think everything was hunky dorry. But you don't hit the upper echelons until you can court the common gamer. That's where the bigger money comes from and they've simply failed to do that so far.
Maybe they can recover, maybe they can't, but they now have one hell of an uphill battle to fight.
