FInal Fantasy XIV: ARR Turns Square's Fortunes

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn's stronger-than-expected performance has helped Square-Enix back into expected profits, the firm's six-monthly financials have revealed.

FFXIV now has 1.5 million registered players, and a PS4 version is in production. It has exceeded Square-Enix's expectations, and the company now expects to make a 4.7bn yen operating profit for the period. Success in the Japanese arcades has also contributed to the upturn in Square-Enix's fortunes, following a rocky 2013 in which President Yoichi Wada stepped down after the fiscal year ended in a huge loss.

The year ahead for Square-Enix looks promising, with new Deus Ex, Sleeping Dogs, Hitman and Thief games in production. Following Tomb Raider's success earlier this year - it sold more than 3.5m copies, which nonetheless fell short of Square-Enix's hugely optimistic 5m projection - we can expect that Crystal Dynamics will have something to announce next year as well.

SOURCE

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn is such a great game, I'm glad it was a success. The best MMO and Final Fantasy game in a while, IMO.

It's the best game they've made in over a decade! Just re-upped my subscription for 6 months :)

It's a good game until you reach the end content which is severely lacking.

You are basically grinding the same two dungeons over and over again for around 30 hours just to get your full lvl 70 gear.

Good for them. I am glad they are back on track. I was wondering if people were still playing the game. 1.5 million is a solid number.

Good maybe now they can afford fix the horrible server issues alot of people have been having. Setting up European servers in Europe would be a great start.

i still gotta play it

Surprisingly good.

Most MMOs are like that at launch

@charizard1605: personally thought it was boring as hell. I love MMO's. I tried and tried to like it but compared to games like Rift and Guild Wars 2 it's just dull.

Interesting. It's still pretty recent though, and MMOs can die off quickly after a boom period. I'll wait and see if it retains a high userbase after the initial boom.

Do i need to pay a suscription? or is like Guild Wars 2? because if not...then i won't be playing it.

You should have switched servers when it was still free. >_>

@madsnakehhh: it's subscription but you get the 1st month free.

If it wasint subscription based I would cehck it out.Games looks fun and I do enjoy the FF games. yes even the recent ones. Also pretty funny their biggest apology turned out good for them.

@finalfantasy94: it's worth a play, even for a month. I only did the free period, I was planning on subscribing but by the end of the month I was just bored to tears and was missing Guild Wars 2. Kinda feel I have to play when I subscribe, unlike GW2 where I can leave and return whenever I want

You know, this is the main reason why I've taken a break from MMOs. It seems like MMOs work hard on the "leveling up " aspect of the game. What this does is it gets a lot of new subscribers on board, which is fine...for that initial cash flow. But the real money comes from the long term influx of money, and the people who are gonna subscribe long term are the ones who will inevitably spend the majority of their time at the end game. I feel like MMOs should put more emphasis on creating a sprawling and enticing end game rather than early game. I'm not saying make a crappy early game, no, do a good job with it, but make the end game more expansive and spend more time on it.

It feels like most MMOs nowadays, you play through the early days get to the last level and realize there is pretty much nothing for u to do unless you have a group of 40 friends who are equally as invested in the game as you are and have a lot of free time so you can do massive raids. People like that are the minority, not the majority, hence why I personally just quit after I reach max level. Not much left for me to do unless I'm literally willing to put my entire life on hold and find 20+ people in a guild who are willing to do the same.

Good for them. They put some serious effort into ARR, and it's a lot of fun.

I want to buy this game but I am reclusive does it force you to group or can I play by myself?