News

Square Enix Announces Weak Results due to Development Costs and Underperforming Mobile Games

Square Enix

Today Square Enix posted its financial results for the first nine months of the current fiscal year, alongside the latest quarter.

Recommended Videos

As you can see in the tables below both the company as a whole and the Digital Entertainment business (which includes games) posted lower results across the board for both sales and income in the nine months between April and December.

On the other hand, if we look only at the latest quarter, sales increased year-on-year, but income decreased considerably.

Square Enix explained in the accompanying press release that those higher sales were due to recent launches of console games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Just Cause 4, and Octpath Traveler, but those failed to cause an equivalent increase in profits “due to greater amortization of development costs for major new titles and increased advertising expenses.”

We also learn that many people for smart devices and browsers launched in the previous fiscal year “performed below expectations,” and failed to generate additional revenue on top of that brought in by established games.

In order to address the issue related to mobile games, Square Enix intends to focus on select titles and games based on existing IPs.

On top of that, they aim to rebuild the “development and operation organizations, and strive to create new hit titles.”

About the author

Giuseppe Nelva

Proud weeb hailing from sunny (not as much as people think) Italy and long-standing gamer since the age of Mattel Intellivision and Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Definitely a multi-platform gamer, he still holds the old dear PC nearest to his heart, while not disregarding any console on the market. RPGs (of any nationality), MMORPGs, and visual novels are his daily bread, but he enjoys almost every other genre, prominently racing simulators, action and sandbox games. He is also one of the few surviving fans on Earth of the flight simulator genre.

Comments