Square fingers crossed as PlayOnline recognises the job in hand.

SquareSoft has announced to its anxious shareholders its projections for PlayOnline, its in-house online gaming portal, to be launched alongside Final Fantasy XI in Japan next year.

Grimacing, Square said that PlayOnline will have to attract at least 400,000 paying users in the first two years online. This figure will mean that Square breaks even on the project, using the company’s own financial projections.

The membership fee to be payable by players in these figures is around US$10 per month. Square is hoping to ship 400,000 PlayOnline packages in the first year, of which, it expects 250,000 will be in use, within the first 12 months.

In other news, Square has spoken about shipping figures in the US and Europe for its massively anticipated RPG Final Fantasy X. The company will ready a total of 2.4 million units of the game for the States, with about 25% of this figure being readied for December 26th launch. The rest are expected to be mastered and shipped in January 2002.

Europe will receive around 380,000 copies of the game at launch next summer.