Final Fantasy XI is the most profitable Final Fantasy ever

In the wake of the celebration of Final Fantasy XI's ten year anniversary, Square Enix president Yoichi Wada announced that FFXI was the singlemost profitableFinal Fantasy title in the series' history.

The announcement surely comes as a surprise to many Final Fantasy diehards because FFXI was likely the most controversial and divisive in the series' history. However, this illustrates the staggering earning power of the subscription MMO.

Despite tens of millions of people lining up to pay full price for past games in the series like Final Fantasy VII and the recent Final Fantasy XIII, it still pays more to have a smaller, devoted group of people throwing fresh cash at you every month.

Most of these profits likely come from Southeast Asia and Japan where the game was able to find a much stronger audience than it did in the United States.

Now we're curious to hear how these numbers stack up against the relatively disastrous launch of Final Fantasy XIV.

TOPICS
Andrew Groen

Andrew is a freelance video game journalist, writing for sites like Wired and GamesRadar. Andrew has also written a book called EMPIRES OF EVE: A History of the Great Wars of EVE Online.

Latest in Final Fantasy
Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail cinematic screenshot showing Alphinaud Leveilleur, an Elezen boy with short white hair
Final Fantasy 14's funniest speedrunning beef continues as runner who lost a world record to its original champ in just 1 day returns, beats record, is promptly dethroned again
Final Fantasy 7
Sony finally managed to pry Final Fantasy 7 away from Nintendo thanks to a "schmoozer" of a former employee who hung out with Square Enix executives at his parties, according to one former PlayStation boss
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Remastered Edition
Square Enix kills Final Fantasy game's mobile version after being unable to "completely fix" a bug stopping fans from accessing their additional paid content
Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster
Final Fantasy creator says the original JRPG's programmer was "like a god" to him: "I still strongly feel that the core program itself is the ‘life’ of a game"
Final Fantasy 14 producer Yoshi-P interview's the series' founding father Hironobu Sakaguchi
After 3 years of playing Final Fantasy 14 "almost every single day," series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi reckons the MMO "might be the game that I've played the most in my life"
Final Fantasy 14 patch 6.4 The Dark Throne
As the Final Fantasy 14 devs "continue to take a firm stance" against mods that can enable harassment, Yoshi-P says improvements are starting in patch 7.2
Latest in News
Snow falls as guards in armor and red highlights wait in Wuchang: Fallen Feathers
Black Myth: Wukong empowered fellow soulslike devs to become China's first "elite" devs on par with Naughty Dog or Capcom: "The market has been validated"
Liam Neeson as Qui-Gon Jinn in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace
After 26 years, a secret Star Wars reference to George Lucas has been uncovered: "We got a new Phantom Menace Easter Egg before GTA 6"
Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori
This stunning open-world horse game smashed its $65,000 Kickstarter goal straight away, and it's bringing my favorite part of Red Dead Redemption 2 to 13th-century Mongolia
Robert Pattinson in Mickey 17
Parasite and Mickey 17 director Bong Joon Ho doesn't want to make a franchise film – unless it's an Alien musical
Four adventurers journey into a dim dungeon
Dark and Darker's legal battles are far from over as the popular extraction RPG has been pulled from the Epic Games Store again
Discord
Discord is reportedly "in early talks with banks" about going public, but the company won't comment on "rumours or speculation"