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You are aware though that Tanaka's position and role with XI has never changed at all. His position and role with XI now is the exact same as it was when Abyssea was out. The reason attention was diverted over to XIV was because it was in a terrible state, and just letting it die entirely would have been devastating financially, not to mention it would have also really reflected badly on the company itself.
Even though XIV is a lot better than before, it's still generally considered to be incomplete and in the works, and probably won't be up to standards till 2.0, so they'd be foolish to pull people from it just as it's starting to get off the ground.
Even though XIV is a lot better than before, it's still generally considered to be incomplete and in the works, and probably won't be up to standards till 2.0, so they'd be foolish to pull people from it just as it's starting to get off the ground.
I've mentioned part of the v2.0 exercise may be face/honor. SE made it (hopefully knowing) that the odds favor it tanking or getting some support but nowhere near enough to pay for the cost of FFXIV 1.0 + 2.0 + all that time it was free to show its investors and the banks that give it loans that they can still make games. The ranking of outcomes with FFXIV 2.0 they favor are:
- Huge success, critical darling, millions of players (have to be quite delusional to believe this)
- Modest success, can pay off its dev costs, but may take time.
- Not a bust but not enough to be profitable. Not critically panned. SE can at least show "See, we tried".
- Complete flop, unable to shake off its v1.0 legacy. SE can still show they tried.
- Complete flop, critically scathed. SE is unable to restore/boost confidence in their ability to make good games again.
I wonder if they are adding to the huge money pit that is FFXIV 1.0 by developing 2.0 not just as a gamble because they are still delusional and think it can succeed (doubling down) but to simply make a game that by itself can be considered a fairly good to great game even if nobody plays it to prevent their investors and banks that give them loans for funding projects from losing confidence in their abilities. In other words, that SE sees it as the cost of keeping themselves from getting knocked down to a smaller company, a has-been, that FFXVI+ can be as well-funded as FFVII thru FFXIV.