Square Enix Financial Results Fiscal Year 2025

[CalvinDescoles]

https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/i...25q4slides.pdf

So yeah, basically the MMO division is holding everything together for Square Enix. But seriously — where does all that money even go? (Rhetorical question, of course… we all know the answer.)

Putting aside the digressions, what these results show is that — despite the disconnect caused by the reception of Dawntrail — it remains a financial success for the MMO section of SE. We yet need to know if it was better or not than Endwalker.

So… what should we think of that?

[TheInsomniac13]

Financial success must not mean that everything is well. Financial profit can also mean that they cut costs even further or managed to make fare more money via the cash shop etc. what ever the details of this numbers are we cannot know but I feel affirmed that any money FF 14 makes get´s sucked up by SE and put into other projects.
Meaning FF 14 Budget remains small forcing the Devs to make cheap design choices.

[Oizen]

Why put money back into your money maker when you can make flops? The world needs more shelved mobile games after all.

[MonsutaMan]

I answer rhetorical questions....because a question, is still a question......

A lot of areas.

Expenses, debt.....such as creating an MMO that costed $400,000,000......Along with other costly titles.....This is the belief of many....

"The failure of FFXIV 1.0 was cited as a major reason why Square Enix reduced its projected income for the year by 90%."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertc...orecast-by-90/

"Square Enix invested heavily in developing and marketing version 1.0, estimated to be around $400 million USD."

SE has been reckless......
https://tech.yahoo.com/general/artic...142904767.html

XIV nearly destroyed SE, and they are still paying for XIV til this day. Avengers was believed to cost around 185 million, compared to 400 million (XIV)...... XIV not Avengers is SE's costliest flop. It was deemed the most expensive RPG ever. This is how you soak up your money and wonder where the "Profits" went......what is a profit at this point? Hence, no level of success seems to be enough for SE (High expectations....).

[CaptainLagbeard]

It's FF XIV and Gacha carrying the video game side, as pretty much every other game they put out manages to flop... Either by bad decisions or just straight up falling into complete obscurity...

People at SE keep thinking the kinds of games that made them popular in the first place, like your old school Final Fantasies and Dragon Quests just aren't popular with people who played them... Instead, everything for them has to be an ARPG or a Souls-like...

[Atreides]

It's FF XIV and Gacha carrying the video game side, as pretty much every other game they put out manages to flop... Either by bad decisions or just straight up falling into complete obscurity...

People at SE keep thinking the kinds of games that made them popular in the first place, like your old school Final Fantasies and Dragon Quests just aren't popular with people who played them... Instead, everything for them has to be an ARPG or a Souls-like...

Just that at this point most of SE's Gachas have long shut down and continue to do so, it's never worth to get invested in SE's Gachas they have the tendency to end services for those.

[Volgia]

What are we trying to conclude from this PDF, I'm like not smart enough to parse through this.

[CaptainLagbeard]

Just that at this point most of SE's Gachas have long shut down and continue to do so, it's never worth to get invested in SE's Gachas they have the tendency to end services for those.

I do wonder how well Ever Crisis is doing, it's far from the worst game, but it is a Gacha...

[Greyhawk]

What are we trying to conclude from this PDF, I'm like not smart enough to parse through this.

That the backs of North America are keeping the Japanese company afloat with revenues from their MMO market, while also taking advantage of their online store sales, yet NA influence with regards to player feedback goes pretty much unnoticed. Before you say, "Oh, they took Reaper from us as feedback!" - Fantastic, one thing out of thousands they ignore and continue to ignore.

The hard truth here is like someone else pointed out - the management of that company is borderline run criminally. Their revenue is down, operating costs are up. That means they are going upside down, breaking their necks on trash that no one is buying, yet they are still producing.

[Misutoraru]

I never work in gaming industry, but if it is similar to my experience working in both western and japanese mega corpo then I can understand why Japanese one are failing.

Working in Western corp, we always have a few lines than make profits, not huge but steady profits. Big chunk of those profits will end up in developing new lines of products or even a new market.I work in characterization, and so many project got pile up we have to expand the team in very short period of time, and even set up a brand new hub for R&D. It is always a gamble and one of the organization i worked for end up firing 1/3 of the work force because gamble does not pay off.

Japanese corp, relatively converative, if the products are selling we do little upgrade and push it as improved version. We do put budget into R&D but nothing compare to what I see in Western corp. One of the biggest resistance is "change", quality department hate change, manufacturing department hate change, and higher management hate change. Investment into R&D take years to return a profits, and many higher management are so fear to bring bad news to investors.