Is it really that hard to retry the old formulas like FF VII, VIII, IX or even do a badass HD remake of all of them. See how your sales do then Squeenix!
Square Enix posts $26 million quarterly loss
By
Brendan Sinclair, Senior Editor
Final Fantasy and Tomb Raider publisher posts marginally better sales than last year for the April-June period as Dragon Quest Monsters 3DS leads traditional game sales.
Square Enix expects to turn a tidy profit for its current year, but it's off to a bad start. The publisher today reported results for its first fiscal quarter (the three months ended June 30), which saw net losses of nearly ¥2.1 billion ($26.4 million). For the same period the year before, Square Enix turned a profit of ¥690 million ($8.8 million).
Despite the hit to the bottom line, Square Enix sales were up for the quarter. Citing the Japanese release of Dragon Quest Monsters: Terry's Wonderland 3D for the 3DS as a strong performer, the publisher posted sales of ¥24.9 billion ($316.5 million), up about 1.6 percent year-over-year. Square Enix also highlighted successes in the browser-based and mobile markets with the Japanese free-to-play title Sengoku Ixa and the social-focused Final Fantasy Brigade.
"The advancement of networking and digitalization, and the diffusion of smartphones have triggered a fundamental change in the business environment surrounding the Group, where content delivery measures to customers and business models are increasingly diversified," the company said in its report. "The Group views this change as an opportunity to capture new profit sources, and is making every effort to establish its profit base through expansion of content and services that conform to emerging customer needs, and launch of full-scale commercial services for major MMO titles."
Square Enix left its full-year financial forecast unchanged, with the publisher expecting to turn a profit of ¥9 billion ($114.3 million) off sales of ¥165 billion ($2.1 billion). Its remaining slate of games for the current fiscal year includes a number of high-profile new releases, including Tomb Raider, Hitman: Absolution, and next week's Sleeping Dogs.
By
Brendan Sinclair, Senior Editor
Brendan Sinclair has been a games journalist since 1999. His tastes are eclectic, though he has a definite affinity for games with arcade roots. He's Canadian, but has also been at home in Atlanta, Austin, Chicago, and San Francisco.
33 comments
The market went to shooter games, and left the turn base games behind, leaving a window of opportunity. Instead of seizing the non competitive market and turning out a profit they followed the rest of the sheep. Here?s a wired idea, give the people that are paying for games something they really want like FFVII revamped. Or follow other big titles that worked in the past, Shadow Hearts, Legend of the Dragoons. It?s kind of cliché but make fun games and people will play, until then I?ll sit here playing my Playstation 2 playing cartoon games like Disgaea.
"The Group views this change as an opportunity to capture new profit sources, and is making every effort to establish its profit base through expansion of content and services that conform to emerging customer needs, and launch of full-scale commercial services for major MMO titles."
Well, that just proves my suspicions...Squenix is a dying company. MMOs are a dead-end, selling digital crack to crack addicts - they have to have more and more to get the same high as the first hit, eventually it stops satisfying them, and they're left with nothing except their craving for more. Never shipping a finished product, never fixing all the bugs, and never giving the public a product they can keep forever. RIP Final Fantasy, it's been wonderful (then Squenix crapped out FF13 and killed the series).*sigh* First they came for my space-flight sims, and I said nothing. Then they came for my city- and nation-building sims, and I said nothing. Now they're coming for my RPGs...
Squeenix... you're becoming the next Capcom. Not listening to your fans results to those things. Release Type-0 in English and don't focus too much on Nintendo consoles/portables.
Brendan looks like Alan Harper.
On-topic I wish for the worst for SE. Just so the only people I care about who still work in there can make their own companies seperated from Kitase, Toriyama, etc.
individually square and enix have made some incredible work, now they dont know what they are doing anymore
All Square has to do is crank out Final Fantasy Games and new IPS (or keep releasing old IPS) like they did in the late 90's. Look at this timeline
1997-- Final Fantasy VII
1999-- Final Fantasy VIII
2000-- Final Fantasy IX
2001-- Final Fantasy X
2006-- Final Fantasy Xii
2009-- Final Fantasy XIII
Final Fantasy 7 and 10 were released within 4 years of each other. By contrast, 10 through 13 were released within 9 years of each other (which is one less game). The longer development cycle obviously hasn't produced much better games either.
1 Like @Hiricine They got hit by the MMO bug and can't seem to shake it off. Until they decide to just scrap FF MMO's thats where all their focus will lie. SE wants to make the easy dollar but finding that its not easy... -_-
@decoy1978Its so true. Their development team went from making the gold standard of single player games to making second rate MMOs. How insane is it that FF XIV flopped and now instead of moving on and putting more effort into getting XV on the table, they're revamping XIV.
1 Like Well what games have they released in the first Q? A sequel to the worst FF game ever made and....... I can't even think of anything else they released on the plus side they've got some good looking games coming out hitman and the FF10 update
1 Like If this news is in any way surprising to any of you then we are all going to die. Square Enix as a publisher is not too shabby given Deus Ex 3, Tactics Ogre: LUCT, and a few others. But as a developer? SE is a lot like a fart, it is noticeable at first but quickly disappears into the couch cushions and you might get a hint of it later but it is never as good.
2 Like I'm glad they're still making the Dragon Quest games in the classic JRPG way. God knows Final Fantasy has gone down the proverbial crapper.
1 Like YES!! Teach SE a Lesson Stop making Sequesl to Crappy Ass Games and Bring out Versus & Final Fantasy XV. Stop BS with spinoffs and DLC Practices, you only lose more an more fans the longer you drag out Weak Ass Games and Prolong Games People Want.
It would be interesting how the current quarter will fare with major releases like Dragon Quest X.
1 Like @thom_maytees Being that Dragon Quest X is becoming an MMO, I know they aren't getting my dollar, and I LOVE the series.
@DragonRift Same, I just don't see why they would suddenly change the whole genre and gameplay of one of their flagship series.
Would probably be doing better if they stopped developing wackass games. They seem to be doing better on the publisher side of things these days. My have the mighty have fallen. They were better when they were Squaresoft.
1 Like SE needs to put their minds to work on developing new IPs. Milking Final Fantasy, Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, etc. forever isn't going to be successful. Put on your thinking caps and come up with something fresh and compelling!
12 Like Note to Squenix: Next time, DON"T make a sequel (possibly 2) to the worst FF title to date. Its not a hard concept........
Deus Ex 3 next?? crickets??? damn
Blood omen 3?? did I hear a mouse? crickets?? damn....
Thief 4??? more crickets damn....
IDK, joking aside I'd rather steal stuff from rich people than raid tombs....I'd rather see the next step for Deus Ex whatever it will be or the next Blood Omen, forget Raziel, Kain is where it's at.....he's the vampire of vampires in games aside from Vampire The Masquerade that is....
I got nothing against Lara Croft or her games it's just we've had more than enough of them this gen....at least I have.
The only games I like to play from SE are the Dragon Quest games, the rest of what SE puts out doesn't intrest me. If SE made more intresting games they would be doing better.
1 Like @digitaltiger In terms of what games Square made themselves? God, everything has been a disappointment. Enix still tries, so I can't hate them just yet.
But, don't tell me you avoid everything SE publishes. If so, you're missing out on awesome titles like Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Just Cause 2. :O
I play about 95% of the time rpg's and srpg's, I just can't seem to get into other genre's. So games like the one's you mentioned just don't catch my eye. They are probably good but just not for me.
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