FFXI Expansion, already?

 
FFXII slated for next year in Japan
 
 
 
Square has announced its consolidated statement for the term ending March 2002.
 
On Tuesday, Square announced its consolidated statement for the financial term ending March 2002. Sales changed to 36.6 billion yen, a 51.5 percent decrease compared with the preceding term. Although game software sales were good in respect to profit, which helped move the company into the black with a 4 billion yen profit (compared with a 2.6 billion yen loss from the previous term), failure of its Final Fantasy motion picture cost it 16.5 billion yen. Final Fantasy X for the PlayStation 2 has contributed to the profit greatly with 4 million copies shipped (2.48 million in Japan, 1.46 million in North America). The company\'s collaboration with Disney, Kingdom Hearts for the PS2, has also shipped 600,000 copies.

The company predicts that its consolidated statement for the term ending March 2003 will equal to sales of 25 billion yen and a profit of 4.4 billion yen. Profits are expected from the European sector, which will carry out licensed sales of its software, like Final Fantasy X. It also expects to have 200,000 subscribers on its Final Fantasy XI online game service by this summer in Japan. Although a PC version of and an expansion pack to the game are scheduled for release later this year, the company has not confirmed that a North American version of the game will be released during the current fiscal year. Lastly, the company is also expected to release a Game Boy Advance title that features some sort of connectivity with the GameCube. The company also stated that Final Fantasy XII for the PS2 is likely to be released next year in Japan.

Source: Gamespot

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An expansion already?  Or a misprint?  Seems kinda strange to have an expansion already... but if there is, hopefully there will be some sort of Gold Saucer area, with tons of mini games and a PvP arena, Chocobo racing, and Chocobo breeding.  I really wish Square would have put those in the original FFXI... who knows, maybe they did, but from the early reports people are saying they didn\'t...

I think they were talking about the FFX add-on disks, because that sentence doesn\'t make sense.  Probably just a misprint. :surprised

They had always planned to make an exspansion. But it wouldn\'t be an update of the game in any way. It would just be an extra feature. Like most of Square\'s good ideas its not comming State side.

Originally posted by Caspian
They had always planned to make an exspansion. But it wouldn\'t be an update of the game in any way. It would just be an extra feature. Like most of Square\'s good ideas its not comming State side.

They\'re not going to release the expansion stateside? That\'s crap... they should at least release some sort of expansion to the game over here and not just give Japan every expansion disk, especially if they have some big updates on them like a Golden Saucer park or something... :surprised

FFXII is not an MMORPG.  Rather, it is a single player back-to-the-classic RPG like FFX was.  
Any expansions that come out for XI and do very well in Japan will end up released in North America (assuming FFXI does well here too), that\'s just how business works.  Right now, these ideas are so vague, and the info so scarce that speculation is irresponsible though, so just wait and see.  I\'m sure the expansion will do well in Japan tho, and I\'m sure square won\'t let us down.  It\'s too bad we don\'t even have XI over here (course, It\'s worse in Australia )

I\'m also sure they\'re going to push to be releasing the PC version at the same time or after the PS2 North American release, for obvious reasons.  It might not work out that way, but I\'m sure they\'re trying.

Oh No! It\'s FFXI v.2!!!

*Bleh* Dammit... U know I\'m gonna HAVE to buy this.... grrr...

Anyhow, I wonder if the Expansion pack will be included in the NA release or if it\'s going to be a JP only deal? Huh.. lotta questions actually. Will JP, EU, and US players all get to play with each other or are we all restricted to our own seperate servers? Is there going to be any translation or "quick chat" menus to help basic communication ala - beefed up PSO chat interface?

And jus what in gods name is taking them so long to bring the game out over here??!?! I thought FFXI was originally planned to have a world-wide relese date.. not this territorial BS. Is it because they\'re adding in the expansion and working on security more? Christ, I hope so.. there\'s RARELY any cheating on the PSO JP servers.. but the US and EU servers are about trash anymore. Maybe Square\'s jus quadruple checking and then re-working their security measures again just for good measure.

With all this extra time in development, it had better be pretty goddamn hard to hack. (Although, nothing is hack -PROOF-....)