'We are aware': Square Enix president knows golden goose Final Fantasy 14 is losing its lustre

It's a well-known fact at this point that Final Fantasy 14 is Square Enix's breadwinner. It's regularly cited as the company's biggest source of income, but I've been getting the feeling that the golden goose is about to go on life support: There's been a noticeable growing weariness during latest expansion Dawntrail, seeing subscription numbers tick down, and a feeling that the MMO—and Square's overreliance on it as a money machine—is teetering on the edge.

It's something that has not gone unnoticed among higher ups at the company, it seems. During a recent shareholder meeting—with snippets shared by investment reporter Yuzz on X—president Takashi Kiryu was questioned as to whether he was aware that the game had "experienced a decline in game quality and a loss of fans" since Dawntrail's release.

"We are aware of it," Kiryu responded as per a machine translation. "The development team is doing its utmost to ensure that people continue to enjoy the game after 8.0 [the next expansion]."

I mean, that's all well and good, but we're here in the present with at least another year of Dawntrail ahead of us. There've been some good things, mind—I've thoroughly enjoyed Occult Crescent despite its "instance gacha" nonsense, and while December's 24-player Chaotic raid drew mixed reception, it's been one of my favourite things in the expansion so far.

But a hardcore raider-heavy first year and a sluggish patch cadence has drawn its fair share of criticism, which has made it difficult for anyone who isn't dabbling in savage raids or above to keep their subscription going.

Kiryu continues to say: "There is an opinion that producer [Naoki] Yoshida, who is juggling multiple roles, may not be able to focus on Final Fantasy 14 due to his busy schedule, but he believes that the work he is doing concurrently will definitely contribute to Final Fantasy 14 as valuable experience."

Now here's where I have to call BS a little bit and say that I think Yoshida's plate-spinning—along with FF14 team Creative Studio 3—is causing the MMO more harm than good. After all, not only did he produce Final Fantasy 16 alongside CS3, but the studio has also been heading up development on the Final Fantasy Tactics remaster.

It feels like a lot to be tackling, especially with the looming expectations from Big Squeenix around your MMO being the big cash cow. It also somewhat serves my theory that FF14 has been in a semi-autopilot mode in the last couple of years, churning out stuff that's familiar and easy enough to make, and fits in easily with the game's pretty rigid patch formula.

I think it's also simply a problem where scaling down after Endwalker's narrative conclusion just isn't hitting with folk. As I wrote when I took a look at the state of the game earlier this year, Endwalker's post-patch story was largely a bottle episode.

Then with Dawntrail, Square is essentially having to spend a huge chunk of time worldbuilding and re-establishing the stakes with a decade of narrative baggage behind it, and that's a tough thing to do. Especially when your most popular lead writer ascends to a more supervisory role, leaving a bunch of new writers in to do the job, which is exactly what happened.

You don't have all the wonder and shininess of a new game and world to carry having the same lore nugget repeated at you three times over, which means that the new arc has to be interesting enough to grab you and hold onto you for dear life. Which, unfortunately, Dawntrail hasn't been able to quite nail yet.

Realistically there are a multitude of reasons why FF14 has seen a bit of a downturn. While I'd never wish ill upon one of my favourite and most-played games, I do hope it's just enough for Square to panic a little and leave its golden goose with more of its eggs.