Since its re-release just under two years ago, Final Fantasy XIV has continued to grow, with Square Enix announcing that the game has reached five million registered player accounts. Square Enix took to it’s Twitter account in order to break the news to fans.
In just under 2 years, FINAL FANTASY XIV now exceeds 5 million registered accounts globally across North America, Japan, Europe, and China!
— SQUARE ENIX USA (@SquareEnixUSA) August 21, 2015
While the five million registered player accounts span around the globe, this doesn’t mean that Final Fantasy XIV has five million actual subscribers. Even though World of Warcraft’s subscriptions have dropped to 5.56 million, it’s likely that WoW is still far ahead of Final Fantasy XIV‘s subscriber rate, should FF XIV continue to grow the way it is; after all, Final Fantasy XIV hit four million registered accounts earlier this year, with the extra million coming in a relatively short space of time.
The extra million subscribers that have signed up for Final Fantasy XIV since February could also have come from Heavensward, the first expansion for the game, which launched earlier this year, although it’s improbable that all those subscribers signed up just for the expansion. It should also be noted that the five million number doesn’t actually include those players who have signed up for free trials, so the number of actual accounts for Final Fantasy XIV could be significantly higher.
When Final Fantasy XIV was originally released back in 2010, it was a complete mess, with many critics deriding the game as a failure. It was so poorly received that Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada said the game greatly damaged the Final Fantasy brand, and this led to most of the games management being ousted from their positions and replaced. Eventually, players were given an extended free trial, and the game was re-released with an almost complete overhaul to most of the game. After the re-release of the game, it was much better received by fans and critics.
Luke Luby is a journalist currently based in Cork, Ireland. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and a Higher Diploma in English. For the last several years, he has been writing for a number of different publications.
