Square-Enix is doomed. Here's why.

[mrstickball]

twesterm said:

mrstickball said:

Think you could talk a little bit more about Square's costs and losses involved with FFXIV? I know you work in the industry, and would like to hear about how much Square is hemorraging from XIV. I'd imagine that development costs on the game were likely between $70-$100m USD and with current sales, are nowhere near that kind of revenue (much less the monthly fees of upkeep - and thats what Im interested in learning about).

Sorry for the late reply, I've been beyond busy.

Anyways, as far as costs go I don't know a whole lot beyond what common knowledge and google can get you.  I had the cost breakdowns for a last gen AAA game but that's a slightly outdated by now.  For those above costs I just googled for server prices and that made it pretty easy to see that servers cost a lot of money.

Also, man, Teo completely destryoed me with that last argument.

Alright. I was unsure if there was anything outside of what I knew on my end. You'd think that Square would need about 150,000-250,000 active subs just to keep the lights on - much less pay them back for all the work they did to make the game in the first place (likely between $50-$100m not including any updates).

It'd seem that unless they have a miraculous turnaround, FFXIV is going to cost them a lot of money.