Final Fantasy XIV’s release debacle continues with the news that Square Enix is offering players another month of free play with their purchase – a move which detractors lambaste as an attempt to stop even more disgruntled players from abandoning the game.
The offer of an extra 30 days free (for a total of 60 days free play for all accounts opened before the 25th of October) certainly means there is no better time to start the game – however, critics claim Square Enix is simply trying to reverse plummeting server populations whilst it rushes out patches.
Meanwhile, the western gaming press continues to pan the game almost as much as the players themselves:
Tinfoil hat on. Take all this with a grain of salt, it is merely speculation by someone with little industry knowledge.
You know, one of the comments I hear most frequently in the criticism on FFXIV is “where did all the time and money spent on the production on this game go for it to come out like this?”
And it got me thinking, what if SE hasn’t been honest to players and stockholders about the amount of time and money spent on FFXIVs production?
And the reason it came out in such a rushed and unfinished state is that stockholders became suspicious, and demanded to see where all the money was going to?
Lets say profits for a quarter are more dismal than expected. And the real reason is that sales are lower than projected.
It looks better to stockholders if you lie and say that sales were actually really good and the reason profits are down is because you spent a lot of money on the production of an MMO that is likely to provide a significant return on investment.
Now maybe someone with a better grasp of economics and the transparency of SEs operations than me can rip this post to shreds and I welcome it.
But something seems fishy about this game.
just make that stupid game f2p
No amount of patchwork will make this game better. They need to make a new game from scratch to make a game that will be considered triple A class. Of course that means a lot of money and resources which Square will simply not do.
Everything about FFXIV seems to be about money:
-Discourage the amount of time you play so that they can put more people on less servers.
-The extra free 30 days to people who buy the game by the 25th (get more people to pay $50).
My guess is that the CEO wanted a nice X-max bonus so he set the release date reguardless of the state of the game.
We just got to wait. Apparently in the past the company got pwnt and when they released ff1 as a last hope or some s♥♥t they went back up. So hopefully, they release something fucking epic to revive the franchise.