Poor Year For Square Enix

Machismo Fan

Gamespot:

Earlier this week, Square Enix president Yoichi Wada recognized a need for change within his company, saying to Reuters, "we need to go beyond traditional Square Enix." One look at the game maker's fiscal year 2007 performance, and it's easy to see where he was coming from.

Reporting today on its fiscal year ended March 31, 2008, the Square Enix said both revenues and earnings had dropped off significantly from the year before. Sales dropped 9.8 percent on the year to ¥147.5 billion ($1.4 billion)--a sharp contrast to last year's 31.3 percent gains, which grew revenue to ¥163.4 billion ($1.6 billion). While the publisher was able to curtail a precipitous slump in net income from a year ago, Square Enix still posted net income down 20.9 percent to ¥9.2 billion ($89 million).

Square Enix was hit hardest in overseas markets, where sales had slipped 45.7 percent in North America, 41.1 percent in Asia, and 35.3 percent in Europe during the year. That's in sharp opposition to Wada's professed desire to expand its overseas presence to account for 80 percent of the company's sales. As part of this end, Square Enix said last year that it was actively looking for US publishing partners. In addition to confirming Dragon Quest IV, V, and VI for North America earlier this week, Square Enix dated its Xbox 360 role-playing game Infinite Undiscovery for September 2.

The usual suspects dominated Square Enix's list of titles that performed well for the year. A handful of titles released during its fiscal year 2007 broached the 1 million unit mark, including Dragon Quest IV for the Nintendo and Crisis Core - Final Fantasy VII for the PlayStation Portable. Also measuring out respectable sales were Final Fantasy IV (DS) with 590,000 units in Japan, Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings (DS) with 760,000 units in Japan and North America, and Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors (Wii) with 490,000 units in Japan and 110,000 more in North America. All said, sales of Square Enix's offline ventures were of 19 percent year over year, amounting to yen 41.6 billion ($402 million).

As for the publisher's online games, the publisher said Final Fantasy XI had hit 500,000 paid subscribers. Online games revenue was down 11.4 percent to ¥12 billion ($116 million), while mobile phone content saw a similar drop of 15.3 percent to ¥6.6 billion ($64 million). The downturn in the arcade business dragging on Sega Sammy, Namco Bandai, and Capcom is apparently affecting Square Enix as well, with the publisher reporting a revenue fall off 8.7 percent to ¥69.1 billion ($668 million). One of the game maker's other big business--publications--held fairly steady for the year, dropping a mere 0.4 percent to ¥11.1 billion ($107 million), while the miscellaneous and sundry category rocketed skyward 126 percent to ¥9 billion ($87 million), thanks to the collectible card game Dragon Quest Monster Battle Road launched in July.

Calling 2007 a "period of transition," Square Enix projected revenues and profits will do an about-face in its 2008 financial year, which ends March 31, 2009. Laying out its future outlook today, the company expects net sales would rebound 8.5 percent to ¥160 billion ($1.5 billion), with net income seeing a far healthier uptick of 30.5 percent to ¥12 billion ($116 million). To pull of this turnaround, the publisher said it was investing heavily into research and development, with an eye toward amping up "advanced information technologies, which are crucial to promote network-related businesses."

Hopefully this will encourage them to get their finger out for the upcoming FF13.

nix

Thats what they get when they start trying to sell crap spin offs ! I'm glad this happened, maybe it will be the wake up call i want them to have to start making great games again

If 13 is anything like 12 ill be kickin my final fantasy bucket for good !

Retr0gamer

Well what did they expect, their output lately has been an absolute disgrace with the exception of the world ends with you and Front Mission 5 which they didn't bother to give a western release.

animaX

nix wrote: »

Thats what they get when they start trying to sell crap spin offs!

I take it you didnt play crisis core. Its amazing!