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!
