Square Enix has finally made public its dissatisfaction with Final Fantasy 16 and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’s commercial performance, admitting neither game met profit expectations.
In a financial results briefing held May 13 but only released today, September 18, Takashi Kiryu, president and representative director of Square Enix said: “In the HD Games sub-segment, we released multiple new titles, including major titles such as Final Fantasy 16 and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, but profits unfortunately did not meet our expectations.”
Kiryu went on to suggest Square Enix cannibalized sales of its Final Fantasy games released during the financial year ending March 2024.
“We recognize that issues remain in the Digital Entertainment segment,” Kiryu admitted. “The HD Games sub-segment failed to better its profitability, posting operating losses in every year of our previous medium-term plan. In addition to this, we did not manage our title portfolio across the company as well as we could have, which I believe resulted in opportunity losses due to cannibalization between our own titles.”
Square Enix released Final Fantasy 16 in June 2023, then Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth just over half a year later in February 2024. Final Fantasy 16 and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth both launched as PlayStation 5 exclusives, and while Square Enix has announced a sales figure for Final Fantasy 16, it has yet to do so for Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, the second game in the company’s trilogy of Final Fantasy 7 remakes.
The company has already announced a significant rework of its business as it fights for profitability. It has a new multi-platform plan that encompasses PC and potentially Xbox and the next Nintendo console (Final Fantasy 16 launched on PC this week). But it has also canceled a number of games, and, Kiryu revealed, taken steps to better curate its pipeline of games.
“In the case of the HD Game sub-segment, sales of individual games will remain the key variable, but we believe that we will be able to exercise some degree of control over that volatility by carefully curating our pipeline over the next three years,” Kiryu said. “By also working steadily to improve our profitability, we intend to offset the weakness in SD games to achieve overall profitability.”
We did not manage our title portfolio across the company as well as we could have.
Square Enix has now extended the timelines for a portion of its pipeline, “in part because of the massive amount of time required to develop HD games, and in part because we determined that we should rethink how best to deliver some of the titles we had under development to our customers,” Kiryu revealed.
Final Fantasy isn’t the only Square Enix series struggling. Its Splatoon-style game Foamstars also flopped and has since gone free-to-play.
So, what’s next for Square Enix? Square Enix has Kingdom Hearts 4, the third game in the Final Fantasy remake trilogy, and Dragon Quest 12 in the works. In January, Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida said it might be time for a younger generation to lead the franchise and helm Final Fantasy 17.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
