Gamernode: News - President of Square Enix worried

President of Square Enix worried

Category: Industry, Posted: 05/28/2008 at 08:00PM CDT by Demetri Kouvalis, Features Editor

No company can be perfect. Even when some of us fanboys think the highest of Square Enix, the company has problems of its own, internal problems.

I'm not talking about bleeding, but more along the lines of money and recent financial statements. Square-Enix boss Yoichi Wada was, to say the least, displeased by his company's performance, especially when he took a gander at this chart.

The company have released their FY2007 financial results, which not only show them losing money (with a 20% drop in profits), but losing a ton of Western market share in the process. The company's performance in the US should be of particular concern, as it dropped from 6.1 million games sold in FY2006 (when FFXII was released) compared to only 3.7 million last year, while sales were up from 7.2 million sold to 7.5 million in Japan. Apparently the Japanese enjoy their RPG remakes a lot more than we do.

Rumors have it that Wada is worried that the company's games have become more and more insular, alienating itself from the mainstream. True, Square-Enix likes to make the casual DS games on one side, then everything Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest on the other.

I personally think it is because of the lack of new big blockbuster games coming out from their development studio. Once their orignal IPs (The Last Remnant, Infinite Undiscovery) and the new FFXIII hit the shelves, the numbers will jump. We've only been given then next iterations of the FF7 series, FF Crystal Chronicle series and FF Tactics series so far. Let's see the new games soon!

Posted by Collision on 05/28/2008 at 08:07PM

So the only game these guys make is Final Fantasy?

Posted by cowboynwo on 05/28/2008 at 08:45PM

no the make other games like dragon quest and are expanding but there final fantasy series rock.
But once when they get the games really rolling this chart will go from bad to off the scale.

Posted by Chrispy on 05/28/2008 at 08:57PM

This doesn't bode well for original, non-Final Fantasy/DQ stuff.

Posted by JSnake on 05/28/2008 at 09:00PM

Eh, what the hell did they release last year though?

Posted by lskennedy on 05/28/2008 at 11:35PM

Exactly, they didnt release sh*t.

Posted by Cobra951 on 05/29/2008 at 10:42AM

Honestly, I don't know of anything that's going to make their nut worldwide beyond more FF installments. If they can follow up the spectacular XII with a worthy evolution of that approach, they'll be back up to the top. Otherwise, they have to establish some other equally compelling franchise, and that's very hard to do.

cowboynwo said something very similar, and I wholeheartedly agree with him.

Posted by Collision on 05/29/2008 at 10:53PM

Ok, so the only game these guys made is FF.

So what they are loosing profit, that profit is going to better games, making them better.

Posted by enben980 on 05/31/2008 at 05:01AM

Square Enix needs to get their heads from out of their collective ***** and start releasing a bulk of their games in regions other than JPN. It is hard to have compassion for a company that feels that only their own people can appreciate what they make. Sounds a bit ethnocentric to me.

Posted by cowboynwo on 06/01/2008 at 08:39PM

wow it hard for them to bring every game over here and why would you want to release some of those jap games most stink or are really weird. so I think they only send the games we may like so they have been doing good so far. why have them rush crap over here why most titles they send are triple a title's so stop complaining and enjoy there rocking games okay. final fantasy rocks!!!!!!