Three things are certain in life: death, taxes, and a videogame failing to meet Square Enix's sales targets. Last year saw Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and Final Fantasy 16 falling short of whatever number the publisher cooked up in suited-up boardrooms, and before that it said Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy undershot expectations, and called Marvel's Avengers disappointing. Ouch.
It's a tale as old as time, but wait. I'm here to report an anomaly. A telenovela twist. One of Square Enix's children has not only satisfied its sales targets, but it actually managed to bring out an incredibly rare "stronger sales than initially assumed" from the publisher's latest financial report. And no, for once, it's not Final Fantasy 14 being paraded around as the golden child—though it's still the publisher's major moneymaker, for what it's worth.
This time it's the Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake which, while Square Enix doesn't say how many units sold across all its platforms or just how much better it did sell than expected, does specifically mention it as a reason behind "sub-segment operating income" increasing, along with "lower development cost amortization and advertising expenses compared with the same period of the previous year."
- Final Fantasy 14 is, you guessed it, still making bank for Square Enix as Dawntrail rakes in the big bucks, though it might not be all sunshine and tacos
- Dragon Quest 12 is still coming, says Yuji Horii, but they're determined to make a game 'worthy of the posthumous work' of the late Akira Toriyama and composer Koichi Sugiyama
That's all very boring corporate gobbledegook for the most part, but hey, it's a genuine shock to the system to see Square Enix acknowledging a game has sold better than it expected to. But despite the Dragon Quest 3 remake getting its very brief, single sentence flowers, that hasn't stopped Square Enix from reporting an overall downturn in game sales and profits.
Overall profit was reported to be around $1.6 billion, down by 7.7% while net sales were around $1.05 billion, down 10.7% year-on-year. It's a continuing trend for Square Enix, which had already reported falling profits in May last year. It'll be interesting to see if there's any significant uptick in the next year or two, with current CEO Takashi Kiryu entering his third year as head of the company—alongside his restructuring efforts, I assume most of the projects already underway when he stepped into the role are close to wrapping up, or are already out in the wild.
I imagine Square Enix has the potential to take some drastic decisions in the near future, and I'll be over here in the corner praying it doesn't spell the demise for my favourite childhood developer.
