Square Enix’s sales and operating profit were therefore down 15% and 16% respectively compared to the same quarter a year earlier, totaling 548 million euros for the first and 105 million euros for the second. A phenomenon already observed at Nintendo just yesterday, the net profit is on the contrary up sharply by 45% due to the current weakness of the yen and the resulting exchange gain of 95 million euros.
Square Enix explains the drop in results by a lower number of big releases, knowing that the first quarter of the previous fiscal year could count on the launch of Outriders and NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139…. Even if Square Enix was able to counting on the Steam release of Final Fantasy 7 Remake Integrade, Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition and The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story did not shake the market. Mobile games also generated less money, despite the successful launch of Echoes of Mana. There remains the safe bet Final Fantasy 14, which is surfing on the release of the Endwalker expansion and has a greater number of subscribers than last spring.
Square Enix sold 4.28 million games between April and June 2022, far from the 9.88 million in the same quarter a year earlier. In addition to a less strong catalog, Square Enix is also subject to the law of returning to normal after two years strongly boosted by the pandemic. Of these 4.28 million games, boxed sales represent only 520,000 copies, the weakness of the physical market being the direct consequence of the lack of major releases over the period.
As we know, Square Enix’s fiscal year promises to be extremely busy with releases such as Outriders Worldslayer, PowerWash Simulator, Live A Live, Dragon Quest X Offline, The DioField Chronicle, Valkyrie Elysium, Star Ocean The Divine Force , Harvestella, Tactics Ogre Reborn, Dragon Quest Treasures, Crisis Core Final Fantasy 7 Reunion and Forspoken. Well, there are probably not many multimillionaires in the lot, but it will be interesting to take stock of this mass strategy.