Feb 4, 2023

Published 7 minutes ago Detailing its latest financial results, Square Enix reports that its sales have fallen despite launching a slew of games in 2022. Square Enix has announced that its sales for the current year up to December 31, 2022, have gone down despite its slate of games that were released in 2022. The details were made public when Square Enix published its financial results for the period. 2022 marked an interesting year for Square Enix as the company released numerous games like Harvestella, Valkyrie Elysium, Powerwash Simulator, and Valkyrie Elysium, to name a few. During the same year, the company also sold three major Square Enix studios and several major IPs to Embracer for $300 million. In what appears to be a rocky period for Square Enix, the company's recent finances reflected a similar sentiment. In its latest financial results, Square Enix recorded 255.6 billion yen ($1.95bn) in net sales, which is a little under 7% drop year-on-year for the same nine-month period. Its operating income also fell about 17.6% year-on-year at 41.3 billion yen ($310m). The company notes that its HD games, titles that don't fall under live-service or mobile/PC browser, "did not reach the level of the previous year despite the release of multiple new titles." The report further states that the publisher's new titles for smart devices/PC browsers haven't been able to offset the weak performances of the existing games. However, it should be noted that the report's financials haven't accounted for some of Square Enix's more recent and upcoming games . Notably, 2022 was also a year without a major Final Fantasy launch, though the publisher did release the remake for Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7 Reunion in December . The previous financial year saw Square Enix release Final Fantasy 7 remake, followed by the massive Final Fantasy 14 Endwalker expansion. Although more content is expected in the series, Square Enix's report indicates that the company has no plans for more expansion in the MMO during the year. Regardless, it's likely that the publisher will record stronger financial results as Final Fantasy 16 is expected to hit stores in June. It will be interesting to see how things will pan out for Square Enix, particularly with regard to some of its high-profile recent releases like Forspoken. While the AAA title hasn't been accounted for in the latest financial report, the game's performance didn't have the best of starts considering how smaller titles like Hi-Fi Rush beat Forspoken in revenue . In any case, Square Enix will likely look to double down on its slate of games for 2023 in hopes of exciting its fanbase across the board. Though only time will tell how the numbers will look for the publisher.