FINAL FANTASY XI, Success or Failure?

FINAL FANTASY XI, Success or Failure?
	FINAL FANTASY XIV will start its service this year. Now should be a good time to review FINAL FANTASY XI.
	You remind me that MakoNako was mainly for FINAL FANTASY XI.
	We used to talk about FINAL FANTASY XI. only, then we change our subject to all games.
	I have walked along with FINAL FANTASY XI, and now I want to make the final judgement for it.
	Its service is still continuing...
	So FF XI is a success or failure?
	Failure isn't it?
	Failure!?
	I say "failure" because FF XI can only achieve a result far worse than it had expected.
	But the balance sheet shows a good result by online-game department every year. You still think that is a failure?
	Many people say FF XI is successful as it gave a good figure on the balance sheet, but that is only true recently. Overall, it is not so profit-making.
	Overall?
	Sorry I don't know the details, but when SQUARE and ENIX integrated, online-game department had tackled an extraordinary loss. We need to compare the profit with the extraordinary loss and the 10-year development cost.
	I suppose it had made profit?
	I hope so.
	Hope so...
	I don't know the whole figure. The point is, they started their online business under the flag of "PlayOnline", but at the end only FF XI is working, i.e. FF XI needs to cover the loss by other games and that is unclear.
	Huh.
	Even though there is a profit, I doubt if that is satisfactory.
	I think making profit is good enough...
	To make this profit, company needs to invest staff and capital. If those resources had been used in other projects, maybe they had earned more. We can't only look at the balance sheet, and this makes FF XI's evaluation vary.
	Cost-effectiveness huh.
	Also, we need to consider its effect on FINAL FANTASY's brand.
	And the effect is?
	Negative. FF XI had a bad effect on the sales of FF XII and FF XIII.
	Why? FFX had sold 2.3 million, and FF XII kept a 2.2 million sales. CEO Wada had explained that at the Results Briefing Session for the First-Half of the Fiscal Year ending March 31, 2010.
	It is stupid to trust his words directly.
	Stupid!?
	The true point of his words is, when PS2 sold 4.7 million consoles, FFX had sold 2.3 million. When PS2 hit 18.9 million, FF XII kept a 2.2 million sales. This means the brand of FINAL FANTASY won't be affected by console's sales, therefore FF XIII can sell a lot this time too.
	Really.
	By common sense, when console's sales increase, game's sales shouldn't equal or even lower than before. But FINAL FANTASY sales had dropped, and the reason is FF XI.
	How can that be?
	It had offended the taboo of a sequel-series, i.e. cut out the users.
	Cut out the users?
	Users buy sequel by habit. But reasons like unable to use Internet or buy an extra harddisk for PS2 etc., had blocked users to buy FF XI. Once the users had been cut off, they lost the habit to buy FF XII and XIII.
	Really?
	PS3 already hit 4.5 million, that is the same level of PS2's popularity at the time of FF X. However, the final sales figure of FF XIII will be around 2 million, 0.3 million worse than FF X. We can say FF XI made 0.3 million users abandon FINAL FANTASY series.
	Oh...
	Of course there are other reasons like economic downturn and high price of PS3 etc. But we can say FF XI had became the cause of collapse of the FF brand.
	Cause of collapse!?
	Hearing that, can we conclude that XI is a failure?
	It depends on the result of the coming FINAL FANTASY XIV. Nowadays most people can connect to Internet. To play XIV you only need to buy PS3 and basically don't need extra cost. The problem is how to attract users. If the result is worse than XI, I need to ask what is the meaning of this 10 years.
	Hope that is not the case.
	Actually, after many years and the only outcome is FF XIV, that is hard to say it is successful. If all had been achieved according to the original plan, SQUARE EXIX should have became a great company. Nowadays, the concept of PlayOnline is just the same as SNS or online game portal site. You guys may heard about the success of SNS, and PlayOnline wanted to do that 10 years ago. Anyway, its boss wanted to make movie and everything gone wrong, really not funny huh. But this is the actual world.
	I want to see PlayOnline working as it had been planned.
	That's all. As mentioned before, FF XIV will be the real result of FF XI. We look forward to SQUARE ENIX and hope it would use online department's staff and capital correctly.
	You have not touch the game itself. Is FF XI interesting?
	That left for you guys to rate it. If you have meet good friend through XI, you can get more than its playability. If you consider communication as part of playability, that really varies from users. I have many opinions but I can only pray for an improvement in FINAL FANTASY XIV.