Japanese gaming giant Square Enix has been struggling lately, and as recently as February it reported a massive 42% drop in profits. Figures it had hoped to improve significantly through various measures and investments, but also through its two latest launched tentpole games Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth and Final Fantasy XVI.
However, this does not seem to have been the case and according to reports, these games have not changed the situation significantly for the company. That said, things are far from bad for Square Enix financially, the problem is that the money flowing in is not coming from the sources you might have thought.
No, console and PC sales don’t even account for 1% of the company’s profits. Instead, it’s MMOs and mobile games that are filling the coffers with pennies, with the former accounting for 68% of revenue and mobile games 31.1%. In short, Square Enix makes almost no money from its large-scale console and PC games. At least not in relation to what its MMOs and mobile games bring in.
So, the question now is, what does this mean for the future? Can we expect less gigantic role-playing games from Square Enix, or a shift to focus even more on the profit-generating parts?
What do you think and hope, what does the future look like for Square Enix?