Square Enix released its financial earnings for the three months ending June 30, 2024, and reported a significant decline in net sales compared to the previous fiscal quarter.
The publisher attributed the decline in its Digital Entertainment revenue – which includes its video game business – to a drop in sales of new titles in Q1 2025, including SaGa: Emerald Beyond and the launch of the HD remastered Kingdom Hearts collection on Steam.
Numbers
- Net sales: 69.9 billion yen ($477 million), down 18.4% year-on-year
- Profit: 10.6 billion yen ($72.3 million), up 68.6% year-on-year
- Digital Entertainment Net Sales: 43.9 billion yen ($299 million), down 29.6% year-on-year
The most important
Square Enix's HD games division generated net sales of 12.3 billion yen ($83.8 million), compared with 29 billion yen ($197 million) generated in the same period last year. During this time, Final Fantasy 16 and Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster were released, greatly increasing his income.
However, he noted that the HD gaming sub-segment “became profitable due to lower development costs and ad spend” compared to the first quarter of last year.
Net sales also fell in the mobile and desktop browser sub-segment “mainly due to weak sales of existing titles”, but the publisher saw an increase in profits “due to optimization of operating costs”.
For the MMO sub-segment, net sales and profits increased compared to the same period of the previous fiscal year.
Elsewhere, Square Enix's entertainment segment reported a 13.9% increase in net sales to $103 million due to a “year-over-year increase in same-store sales.”
Looking ahead, the company saw no changes to its full-year forecast, which was announced during a financial report on the 13th.
Square Enix also announced a round of layoffs in May as part of a restructuring that affected an unknown number of employees in its publishing, IT and indie divisions in the Americas and Europe.
This was due to a disappointing financial year in which many of the publisher's titles “failed to meet profit expectations, particularly outsourced titles and some AAA titles”.