Square Enix boss Yoichi Wada has high hopes for Final Fantasy XIV, believing it has a good chance of taking on Blizzard’s unstoppable World of Warcraft and snatching a sizable chunk of the vulture-ridden MMO market.
Wada states that Final Fantasy XIV will rival WoW because it’s a sequel, and nobody has ever had a successful MMO and a successful sequel to that MMO: “WoW is a tough competitor, but whether you are talking about EverQuest, Ultima or Lineage there has never been a company that has a continuously successful number one and two MMO.”
He also unequivocally said “yes” to Develop when asked if he believes that Final Fantasy XIV could pull WoW from its throne, although he added that that it would be “tough” to do so.
Wada’s logic seems a bit kooky to me. Surely most MMOs don’t have a sequel because they don’t need a sequel. MMOs don’t work the same way as other games, and this is why World of Warcraft has never needed a World of Warcraft 2. If anything, a sequel is evidence of failure in the MMO market, since your first game obviously didn’t do a good enough job if you need to make a new one.
It seems that Squenix may not be understanding how MMOs work … but a little thing like “not having an effing clue” has never stopped publishers before, right?
Published: Dec 17, 2009 08:40 am