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SQUARE ENIX BOSS DISAPPOINTED WITH FORSPOKEN SALES BUT STILL EXCITED FOR NFT
GAMES


THE FINAL FANTASY MAKER PLAYED ALL THE GREATEST HITS ON A RECENT EARNINGS CALL

By
Ethan Gach

Published5 hours ago

Comments (40)

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Screenshot: Square Enix

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Square Enix is disappointed in the
sales of one of its games. Tomb Raider, Hitman, Outriders, Guardians of the
Galaxy—it’s a long list, and Forpsoken just got added to it. Current Square Enix
president Yosuke Matsuda said during the company’s most recent earnings call
that sales of the magical realist action-RPG were “lackluster.” On the upside,
he said he hopes people will look forward to NFT games launching in the next
year.

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“Reviews of Forspoken, which we released on January 24, 2023, have been
challenging,” Matsuda said in a February 3 earnings briefing, the translated
transcript of which was only released today. He added that while the parkour and
combat in the game were well received and will help the company’s development
capabilities for other titles, the game isn’t selling as much as Square Enix had
hoped.



“Its sales have been lackluster, and while the performance of new titles with
February and March release dates will be the ultimate determinant, we see
considerable downside risk to our FY2022/3 earnings,” he said.

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Elsewhere during the meeting, Matsuda, who is currently set to be replaced after
a decade at the helm in June, said HD game sales were down year over year,
partly due to not having a new Final Fantasy XIV expansion last year, “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.”


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For those keeping track at home, Square Enix released an absurd number of RPGs
in the second half of last year. Here are just a few of them:

 * The Diofield Chronicle
 * Valkyrie Elysium
 * Star Ocean: The Divine Force
 * Harvestella
 * Tactics Ogre: Reborn
 * Dragon Quest Treasures
 * Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion

Diofield Chronicle was an intriguing new spin on real-time strategy. Star Ocean
6 was better than expected but not great. Valkyrie Elysium was an oddly
action-based successor to a beloved turn-based series from the PS1-era. Some of
the remasters like Tactics Ogre were fantastic, others like Chrono Cross were
subpar. Almost none of these games, however, seemed set up to succeed, let alone
meet expectations, due to lack of marketing (and sometimes bad marketing) or
extra development resources.

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When it comes to anything outside of Final Fantasy, Square Enix seems hesitant
to take big swings or roll out the red carpet when it does. And then there are
the times when it appears to try and will a hit blockbuster into existence, as
was the case with Forspoken, which was decent but still flawed. And yet this
doesn’t seem to have stopped the company from going full steam ahead into crypto
shenanigans.

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While it might seem like the rest of the gaming industry has backed off of NFTs,
Square Enix appears fully committed to actually releasing games with them. “We
have organized our pipeline so that we will have a good spread of new releases
in FY2025/3 and beyond as well,” Matsuda told investors. “We also hope that you
will look forward to the blockchain games we plan to launch in FY2024/3 and
thereafter.”

Forspoken probably isn’t getting a sequel. The studio behind it, Luminous
Productions, is now getting absorbed back into the greater Square Enix blob. But
maybe its protagonist Frey can appear as an NFT in Crypto Chocobo or whatever
else is coming down the road.

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MAR10 DAY - SAVE ON MARIO GAMES FOR NINTENDO SWITCH



All week long
On account of the upcoming Friday, March 10 in the year of our King Koopa, 2023,
a whole bunch of Mario games are going on sale

Shop at Best Buy
Shop at Amazon










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