Let's be honest, regardless if you think that FFXIV is a hit or a failure as an announcement, Square-Enix is getting in extremely risky territory making it PS3 exclusive. Now, I personally would not play it even if it came to Xbox 360, but I found this excerpt about FFXI that, mind you, is available for PS2, PS3, Xbox 360, AND PC:
**EDIT: I should have elaborated more on what I meant by failure. I feel that FFIX is bound to fail financially since it'll be in a small userbase and the only way this game can survive for long is having a constant amount of money that will support the servers that will keep this game available.**
The user base for the PlayStation 2 version was truncated initially because of limited sales of the PlayStation 2s hard drive and network adapters that were needed for the game.[76] The Japanese release of Rise of the Zilart was the number one selling game when it debuted with 90,000 copies sold in the first week.[76] The Final Fantasy XI All-in-One Pack was number 36 and Wings of the Goddess was number 40 on the top 50 best-selling Xbox 360 games in Japan as of December 2007.[77]
For the April–September 2004 financial period, Square Enix saw online gaming, particularly Final Fantasy XI, sales increase by 101 percent and operating profit increase by 230.9 percent.[78] Revenues held steady from subscription services in the summer of 2006; in the fall however, Square acknowledged that online subscription revenues were "unsatisfactory", despite the steady performance of Final Fantasy XI.[79][80]
In December 2002, Square Enix president Yoichi Wada announced that there were over 200,000 subscribers to Final Fantasy XI, allowing the company to break even and start making a profit.[81] There were between 200,000 and 300,000 active players daily in 2006.[82] As of August 14, 2006 the Xbox 360 version was the sixth most played game on Xbox Live
Any way you put it, if FFXIV will eventually come to the 360 as well as PC, but what's scarier is the fact that SE is risking spending a lot of money in this game for a very small userbase. For this MMORPG to be completely successful it will need to either 1)Keep a minimum paying fan base of around 1 to 2 million subscribers. FFXI was not able to do it with access of around 100 million availabe players!!!!!
The other possibility I can see it succeeding is by making it Guild Wars like where they bring out expansions every six months or perhaps a pay per item kind of system. But let's be realistic, if FFXI could not hack even 500k subscribers in such a big userbase, what makes SE think that they'll be even remotely better on the PS3?
Opinions welcomed :)
