The brutal thing about a cyclical industry like games is that the better you do one year off the back of a big release, the worse you’ll look next year when you don’t have a comparable whopper to punch up the numbers. Square Enix runs into some of that in its latest financial report, but its figures are also a more complex and interesting breakdown of how its game dev operations are going, now with a lineup of promising JRPGs poised to get it back to the good part of the cycle.
Square Enix breaks its reports into categories, and the one we’re interested in is “Digital Entertainment” (DE), covering “HD Games, MMO, and Games for Smart Devices/PC Browser.” Net DE sales for the three-month quarter ending June 30 were down 11 billion Yen compared to last year, which Square attributes to “lower sales than the segment had generated the previous year, which saw releases that included three ‘Kingdom Hearts’ catalog titles on Steam.”
Last August, the power of PC gamers was on full display as the complete Kingdom Hearts collection jumped 396 ranks in monthly sales charts immediately after coming to Steam.
It’s not all bad news, though. Square’s HD games sector actually generated about ¥1 billion more profit this quarter despite lower sales, thanks to “lower development cost amortization” and decreased related “advertising expenses.”
This cost reduction stands out to me given Square’s ongoing plan to “shift from quantity to quality” with game development amid an aggressive push for multiplatform releases. Making games ain’t getting any cheaper, less-than-amazing games have a harder time cutting through the noise, and leaving money and players on the table with exclusive deals makes less and less sense. Square’s reduced overhead does appear to have benefited it this quarter.
It’s in this space that Square appears optimistic about its remaining 2025 release lineup. Final Fantasy Tactics remake The Ivalice Chronicles launches September 30, Dragon Quest 1&2 HD-2D Remake is due October 30, Octopath Traveler 0 is coming December 4, and the Switch 2 and Xbox release of Final Fantasy 7: Remake Intergrade is timed for this winter.
There’s only one all-new game on that list, and even Octopath Traveler 0 is somewhat based on the series’ mobile game, but it’s still a lovely list of JRPGs that I can’t wait to tear into.
Mobile and browser games saw a similar trend of lower sales but (very slightly) increased profits, while MMOs – namely Final Fantasy 14 and Dragon Quest 10 Online – were down across the board. Here again, with no Dawntrail-sized release, a decline for FF14 is no surprise. It may parallel the blue mood in the MMO’s community right now, but only in relation at most, not in causation.