Wada ResignsFollow

http://www.polygon.com/2013/3/26/4148094/square-enix-ceo-yoichi-wada-resigns

Seems our regular for the producer letters who had taken Hildibrand's theme for himself will be leaving us.

The big concern is more the mentioned shake up of management in the article (more like a blurb). A similar shakeup is what has put TOR on life support, and while it may be seen as sensationalist, this might be worth keeping an eye on as far as how it may affect the game (emphasis on may with a ton of salt on top).

Edited, Mar 26th 2013 6:33am by Ruisu

Given the earnings report and the shake-up this could really put some pressure on the development team to release FFXIV 'before it is ready'. I for one hope they have the courage to stick to their guns. I for one think Yoshi has made a great looking game that I plan to play for a while. It is not all I had hoped for but it will be good.

Matsudo Isn't necessarily the person in staff that needs to shake up and revitalize the company, in my opinion. He's as much old school as Wada is. However, if that means SE will still stand behind FFXIV ARR until it's out, that's fine by me.

At that point, if Yoshida could pick a worthy successor, I'd like to prop him up there and see what he does to the company as a whole - unless he can find someone who mirrors his views to do it for him and he can stay on FFXIV.

Did you just suggest that Yoshi-P take over Square Enix?

Developing for a few games doesn't make you qualified to run a giant company. Square Enix does western and Japanese games, anime, manga, toys, etc.

Edited, Mar 26th 2013 10:06am by Killua125

Tomb Raider came out a couple of weeks ago. It was quite good. I don't think there are any accurate sales figures available.

I agree with him. ARR is surely costing Square Enix a lot of money, and it's seeming unlikely to ever be a financial success.

Even if ARR manages to bring the game up to par for Final Fantasy fans, I just don't see a whole ton of people subscribing for it.

Since Square Enix is reporting catastrophic financial losses, I don't think Final Fantasy XIV has any other option but a free-to-play cash shop model.

Re-releasing the game as buy-to-play and pay-to-play for the second time would be an awful gamble with bad odds... and I don't think Square Enix is in a position to make that gamble. A free-to-play Final Fantasy MMO is more guaranteed to be successful.

Care to explain?

I'm seeing the top Square Enix bigwigs having their salaries cut in half, and the President and CEO resigning.

I just don't know if Square Enix can afford to gamble with XIV if the situation is that dire.

Edited, Mar 26th 2013 10:44am by Killua125

Not really, I don't want to do the F2P vs. P2P argument again, it's all over most of the threads on the first page. There is nothing out there to say definitively that a F2P model makes more money. Frankly I think most people agree that it's the opposite, that a F2P model is the swan song for any game that was once P2P. The difference between FFXIV and other games that attempted P2P is that XIV is already paid for. There are no investors they have to pay back, and therefore a F2P cash grab before sunsetting the game is not necessary.

Have you even looked at SE's financials? The media is a bit sensationalist when it comes to reporting losses. Yes $130 million is a decent chunk of change, but if you actually read their financial report they aren't doing that badly. This is a tightening of the belt because of past performance, this doesn't indicate they have one foot in the grave already.

You seem to think that F2P is a sustainable model though, when really I think it would turn off most of the fans who have stuck around. I know it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Regardless, when I spoke with Yoshi he is adamant this game will be subscription based, end of story. You can wish for F2P for XIV in one hand and **** in your other and I imagine you know which hand will be full first. I'm tired of this argument popping up in every thread.

Another cost efficient approach would be to scrap all language versions except for the Japanese one. ^.^/
Your vehement insistance that the "free to try and play a little but fork out major cash as soon as you want
to enjoy features that would be included in a subscription model" (FtP) approach would bring in more money
in the long run is just a baseless assumption. In FtP games, some players pay triple, while others leech and pay
nothing. Since I would like to enjoy all the features a game has to offer, and since I would not like to be a second
class citizen of the game world, I would have to pay triple. Since I do not want to pay triple, I would not play a FtP
game. And I think my opinion is shared by a significant number of players. Success with an FtP model is just as
much a gamble as with a subscription model.

(...)

Say, did you ever think about how nonsensical it would be for a company to listen to the wishes of players
who want to play for free? I mean, from an economic standpoint that's completely idiotic, isn't it?

I did not say that I like or want a free-to-play model. I think it can potentially lower the quality of the game. I was simply saying that it's a huge possibility for financial reasons.

Yoshi P has stated repeatedly that the game will not be F2P on release. He did not discount the possibility at some point in the future, but SE is taking a "wait and see" approach with the more traditional P2P version.

The issue with F2P is that you need extra server resources up front to handle the massive wave of leeches who will never give you a single dime. With modern day scalable cloud architecture it's not as big a deal, but they'd still need to hand over a million dollars to Amazon that first month to avoid a catastrophe like EA's SimCity, only to watch the server population drop in half in two months as the leeches go "oooh shiny" and switch their attention to the newest toy of the month. Little social games from Zynga don't take up much by way of server resources and they're always recycling and redoing the games in the span of 2 years (the average life of a F2P game), so they just keep re-using their servers. SE doesn't have that option and would have to rent server resources to handle the influx.

Forcing people to pay for the game means they're paying for the server space, the server maintenance, and the electricity to run the data center. The cloud is not magic, and the cloud is not free. Even Zynga games toss advertisements at you, something that would be anathema to an immersive MMO game.