RPGSite: "Square Enix says Forspoken sales have been lackluster, and many small and mid-sized titles 'did not perform as well as we had expected'"
Square Enix is not particularly thrilled by the fact that Forspoken did so bad that physical copies are being dumpstered. And it didn't help that a lot of their other games didn't do well:
The briefing primarily discusses the financial results for Q1-Q3 of the fiscal year ending March 31, 2023, focusing on the most recent quarter of October through December 2022. However, given that the briefing itself took place a week after the release of Forspoken, Square Enix also makes comment about the recent RPG from the soon-defunct Luminous Productions.
On page 3 of the outline, while a specific title is not mentioned, Square Enix President Yosuke Matsuda (who will leave the position next Summer) stated the following about the slate of "small and mid-sized titles" that released in the current fiscal year.
Net sales declined YoY in the HD Games sub-segment, partly because the release of major titles a year earlier had created a challenging YoY hurdle, but also because many of the new small and mid-sized titles we launched this year did not perform as well as we had expected.
Square Enix released numerous RPGs at the tail end of 2022 that plausibly fit the 'small and mid-sized' description. No individual title is specified as an underperformer, but as a refresher, some (not all) of the RPGs that the publisher released in the timeframe include The DioField Chronicle, Star Ocean The Divine Force, Harvestella, Tactics Ogre: Reborn, Dragon Quest Treasures, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion, and Valkyrie Elysium.
That said, IIRC, a bunch of those games in the last paragraph released back to back in the same 1-2 month span, and (almost?) everyone of them was a medieval fantasy game.
AFAIK, Front Mission 1 Remake was the only game they put out that was A) not fantasy, and B) not medieval.
Kind of hard to get sales when
- You have limited thematic variety.
- You have shit scheduling.
- You aren't fully multi-platform.
- You have mediocre-nonexistent marketing.
And yes, they genuinely think that Koopies will get people playing:
Although, to top things off, Square Enix also hopes you "...look forward to the blockchain games we plan to launch in FY2024/3 and thereafter."
Posted Mar 11, 2023, 1:45 AM UTC