Topic: Square Enix Posts Declining Sales and Earnings

[NWR_pap64]

First six months were still profitable, but sales below forecasts.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/24412

In their earnings announcement, Square Enix announced that they saw a drop in sales and earnings for the first six months of 2010. Figures provided for the second quarter show that sales went down to 68,056 million yen ($836 million) from the 90,561 million yen ($1.11 billion) from the year prior. Income fell from 13,091 million to 5,712 million yen ($161 million to $70 million).

Sales data was presented covering the six month period. Over 8.17 million pieces of software were sold. All three regions contributed evenly to their earnings. Japan had 2.84 million units sold overall, Europe had 2.71 million units sold, and finally North America had 2.48 million sofware units sold.

Their biggest seller was Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2 for the DS, with 1.28 million units sold. Currently it is a Japan exclusive title. No other Nintendo title was presented in their briefing.

[Chozo Ghost]

Bringing Joker 2 to western markets seems like a no brainer, seeing as how its their best selling game for the year, yet it is only available in Japan. Granted, it might not be as popular outside of Japan as it is in Japan, but still...

No other Nintendo title was presented in their briefing.

This also might have had something to do with it. Are they being like EA and most other 3rd party developers and not giving Nintendo hardware the support it deserves? If a system is the market leader and you don't support it properly, and then your sales suffer, whose fault is that?

Are the proper Final Fantasy games coming to Nintendo hardware like they used to back in the SNES days? AFAIK these days if Nintendo hardware gets any sort of FF game at all it ends up being some bullshit spinoff like Crystal Chronicles and not the REAL games that Sony's consoles get. Until the day comes that they support Nintendo hardware the way they did in the SNES era I won't believe they are doing enough. Nintendo needs their full backing in order to fully dominate the Japanese market, but they're not receiving that full backing and as a result both Nintendo and Square-Enix are suffering from it.

I say its long over due for Square-Enix to make amends for turning its back on the N64 and rebuild the parternship that profited both companies so well in the 16-bit era. Back in the good old days when Sony made Walkmans, and little else...

ETA: Its also long overdue for a sequel to Super Mario RPG. A Square-Enix partnership with Nintendo set in the Mario universe is guaranteed to print massive quantities of money. It worked well when Sega partnered with Nintendo to make that Mario/Sonic Olympics game a few years back. Anything with Mario in it is pretty much an almost certain multi-million seller. So why don't they want to get in on that? Instead they'd rather toss their support behind the 3rd place Kevin Butler system.

[broodwars]

This isn't terribly surprising.  Final Fantasy XIII sold well, but not to Square-Enix's expectations and probably not enough to justify its ridiculous budget and development time.  We don't have numbers on it yet iirc, but Final Fantasy XIV looks like it could be a colossal flop in the early going.  Throw in the never-ending development cycle for Versus XIII and development costs on whatever Eidos Square-Enix Europe is working on, and things look expensive for the foreseeable future.

As for development on Nintendo consoles, we've been over this.  Call it artistic integrity or arrogance, but Square-Enix likes working with the latest and greatest toys for its big AAA projects.  Nintendo doesn't make gaming platforms anymore that can support that, though I have no doubt that the 3DS will see its share of SNES remakes and perhaps could become the new handheld companion to HD releases (like the PSP is with Birth by Sleep and Final Fantasy XIII Agito.  Besides, where is the RPG market on the Wii, especially outside Japan?  Nintendo hasn't exactly gone out of its way to nurture that genre on Wii, Last Story and Xenoblade nonwithstanding.  There's no guarantee that if Square-Enix made a big budget Wii game that it would miraculously sell just because it's on the Wii.

[TJ Spyke]

As for development on Nintendo consoles, we've been over this.  Call it artistic integrity or arrogance, but Square-Enix likes working with the latest and greatest toys for its big AAA projects.

Not quite. Square Enix has openly said that the mainline Final Fantasy games go to the system with best graphics while mainline Dragon Quest games go to the best selling system.

Assuming Wii 2 has great graphics, it will likely get Final Fantasy XV/XIII (I think it's stupid that MMOs are considered part of the mainline series).

[Dirk Temporo]

Not quite. Square Enix has openly said that the mainline Final Fantasy games go to the system with best graphics

Which clearly explains their huge boner for the PS2.

[Ian Sane]

Which clearly explains their huge boner for the PS2.

With Square Enix it is probably simply a matter of whether the system is good enough for their purposes.  It doesn't have to be the best, they just have certain requirements that it has to meet.
 
The N64 was simply not suitable for their needs because of the cartridge thing so they switched to the Playstation.  The PS2 was not the best but it was not so poor that it failed to meet their requirements.  Square Enix doesn't jump from console to console a bunch either.  They stuck with Nintendo until they could not and have not left Sony because there has been no reason to do so.
 
The Xbox 360 port of FFXIII was due to financial problems where they obviously wanted the game to be on as many platforms as possible.  But then they didn't put it on the Wii because it could not meet their requirements.  If the Wii 2 can handle it then I figure Square Enix could put Final Fantasy on it but only if they decide to go with a multiplatform release (which is more common these days).  They will not take the series off the Playstation consoles unless Sony's hardware fails to meet their requirements.  That in general is something Nintendo fans have to realize regarding third party support.  Very rarely does something just switch platforms willy-nilly.  They need a reason to switch.  So hope for multiplatform support but few will move exclusives to Nintendo just because they can.
 
I remember on the Playstation Square was very prolific.  They had games coming out every year and most of them attracted a lot of attention.  2000 in particular was a big year with the "Summer of Square" and then FFIX later in the year.  These days they're just putting too many eggs in one basket.  They had too much riding on FFXIII and that was just plain stupid.  And the irony is the game sounds like it is mostly compromised and linear.  So they go for broke and end up with a less ambitious game?  Yeah, that's just stupid planning.  I've got nothing against ambitious game design but the priorities have to be in place regarding where that ambition is put towards.  Graphics alone doesn't cut it.  The whole reason to be ambitious to make a better game.  If you compromise the game because you spent too much effort on the graphics then you've missed the whole point.

[Chozo Ghost]

The PS3 is in 3rd place and is the most difficult and expensive platform to develop for. That is two good reasons right there for them to jump ship and go back to their old friend, Nintendo. It was on Nintendo hardware that they became what they are today, so they should not forget that.

[Mop it up]

It was on Nintendo hardware that they became what they are today, so they should not forget that.

Not really. Final Fantasy VII was the game that made Squaresoft legendary, and before then, none of their Nintendo games were anywhere near that level of success, especially outside of Japan. Some people actually thought Final Fantasy VII was the first game in the series, with VII being a metaphor.

Also, I'm pretty sure there was more to the story of Squaresoft's departure than the Nintendo 64 using cartridges, but I don't feel like looking it up.

[Ian Sane]

The PS3 is in 3rd place and is the most difficult and expensive platform to develop for. That is two good reasons right there for them to jump ship and go back to their old friend, Nintendo.

But they can still make the game they want to make on it.  And the 3rd place thing is undoubtably why they went with an Xbox 360 port.  Square Enix can't make the Final Fantasy they want to make on the Wii.  We can see how important to then the visual presentation was.  I think that was not the ideal priority but they couldn't do that on the Wii in a million years.
 
The only reasons to jump ship, not include Nintendo in multiplatform releases but to outright switch target platforms, is if you either cannot make the game you want to make on your current platform or you cannot stay in business by continuing to support your current platform.  It has to be a situation where you absolutely HAVE to switch.  If Nintendo wants to attract support from third parties like Square Enix they have to start with being a multiplatform option and work from there.