Final Fantasy XIV is now the most profitable game in the series’ history.
The news was shared by the MMO’s producer and director Naoki Yoshida during the media tour for Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker, where he also confirmed that the game has hit 24million registered players worldwide.
That growth is a significant increase of 2million since only April when Square Enix announced Final Fantasy XIV had reached 22million registered players. The numbers include those who have registered for the free trial, which includes access to the Heavensward expansion.
The increased popularity over this summer has not been without its challenges however. The surge, reportedly coming from World Of Warcraft players switching over, resulted in digital copies of the game being temporarily “sold out”, while players on North American servers were no longer able to create new characters.
To cope with server congestion, the developers introduced a 30-minute idle timer to kick out players who stayed idle for too long when others were still waiting to log in.
Having too many players is certainly a better problem to have compared to Final Fantasy XIV‘s troubled launch, where version 1.0 was critically panned, until Yoshida overhauled the project, which led to the game starting over in 2013’s A Realm Reborn, while each subsequent expansion has seen the game rise in popularity and critical acclaim.
The upcoming expansion, Endwalker, marks the end of the Hydaelyn and Zodiark saga, which released on November 23, with early access from November 19.
In an interview with NME, Yoshida also teased why Endwalker‘s antagonist Zenos takes up the role of Reaper: “It’s not really the case that we wanted Reaper to have a big role in the story, or have a big impact in the story, but it might be that there is some reason why Zenos has gone down that path.”
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