Square Enix Loses Nearly $2 Billion in Value Since Final Fantasy 16

[Wyssahtyn]

isn't the guy a huge nft shill too? better brace for those as well lol.

[Deceptus]

Thought about posting this earlier, but figured I'd wait for someone else to do it as I didn't feel like writing an intro lol.

Seems like XIV is one of their few products not losing them money these days. I guess we'll see how 7Remake-Part 2 turns out. They really need a big win financially after the past few years outside EW.

The reason we don't get good QOL updates / server updates / fixed code is because all of that is expensive and FF14 is being used to funnel money into other projects that largely underwhelm / fail.

[Lauront]

14 carries the company so it will never get canceled dont worry bud

How do you reckon? It's around 15% of their total revenue - 17% in a good year - and that's the MMO subdivision as a whole. It's not insubstantial, and of course it's not the profit (they don't break this down but provide it at division-level), but... seems like a bit of an exaggeration to say it carries the company to me.

[ZephyrMenodora]

How do you reckon? It's around 15% of their total revenue - 17% in a good year - and that's the MMO subdivision as a whole. It's not insubstantial, and of course it's not the profit (they don't break this down but provide it at division-level), but... seems like a bit of an exaggeration to say it carries the company to me.

I think it's the profit issue you hinted at. I think the HD games division often loses money and runs red - and I don't think the MMO division spends as much money on re-investing in the MMOs and it gets diverted. It seems though that a lot of their profit probably comes from churning out pointless mobile games. New-gen HD games are a lot more expensive to produce than our MMO content or a basic mobile gacha game.

This is a trend I have seen in many financials (MMO financials are a weird hobby of mine), which is pretty sad.

Edit: Some of the info about their HD games losing them money is more found in interviews about their HD games, rather than broken down clearly in their financials.

The thing is the image you keep reposting is just net sales... How many people bought the game, that doesn't say how many people are paying subs or buying multiple retainers and so on even the article states that sales will probably main low until the next expansion.

Pretty sure the subs and miscellaneous cash shop/retainer subs are included in the revenue numbers for the MMO division.

[Elissar]

Another clickbait created by the industry of fear... looks like this stuff will never die
The market has a hype period too...look for bear & bull market.

Basically, in gaming industry, every pre release is a bull market and post release is a bear market.
You can find the same happening with R* when they released GTA V and The Witcher 3 for CDPR. It's weird but it's how things works.
After a while, the company tends to gain value and be profitable again, specially when they announce new projects. SE will recover next year.

Even with such loss, SE is more valuable now than 2015 and 2020 in terms of stock market.

Stop this no sense already. Associate this value with FFXVI is even more dishonesty.

[Mcg55ss]

How do you reckon? It's around 15% of their total revenue - 17% in a good year - and that's the MMO subdivision as a whole. It's not insubstantial, and of course it's not the profit (they don't break this down but provide it at division-level), but... seems like a bit of an exaggeration to say it carries the company to me.

The thing is the image you keep reposting is just net sales... How many people bought the game, that doesn't say how many people are paying subs or buying multiple retainers and so on even the article states that sales will probably main low until the next expansion.

[Lauront]

I think it's the profit issue you hinted at. I think the HD games division often loses money and runs red - and I don't think the MMO division spends as much money on re-investing in the MMOs and it gets diverted. It seems though that a lot of their profit probably comes from churning out pointless mobile games. New-gen HD games are a lot more expensive to produce than our MMO content or a basic mobile gacha game.

This is a trend I have seen in many financials (MMO financials are a weird hobby of mine), which is pretty sad.

Edit: Some of the info about their HD games losing them money is more found in interviews about their HD games, rather than broken down clearly in their financials.



Pretty sure the subs and miscellaneous cash shop/retainer subs are included in the revenue numbers for the MMO division.

I'd be willing to wager it has a better profit ratio than some of their other subdivisions because they try spend as little as they can on it and generate revenue from low effort Mogstation rubbish, like the Ysayle outfit, it's just the whole 'carries' thing which I've always found a bit silly.

I think they can see the success of Pixel remaster, Octopath and hopefully Dragon Quest 3 remake and go 'we can make more that scale, cheaper to make, make smaller profits off them'

You'd think, but then...

A new report from Bloomberg painted a bleak picture of Square Enix, which reported a sharp profit decline in August. Analysts told the publication that Final Fantasy 16 failed to make up for the poor performance of previous Square Enix flops, such as Marvel’s Avengers and Forspoken, and mobile games that were shut down soon after launch.

The root of the problem, sources told Bloomberg, is that producers were given “full reign” over the scope and direction of projects, whose goals can shift “without warning”. The upshot of this is volatility in the quality of the final product.

Square Enix has a new CEO, Takashi Kiryu, who intends to reduce the number of smaller games in the works to focus on big-budget games that have a greater chance of making an impact on the company’s bottom line. Square Enix declined to comment.

And from their most recent accounts:





Dunno, their current strategy, between what's in the article and the financial results, just seems like more of the same.

The thing is the image you keep reposting is just net sales... How many people bought the game, that doesn't say how many people are paying subs or buying multiple retainers and so on even the article states that sales will probably main low until the next expansion.

This is the first time I've posted those images in this connection. Why do you think sales would exclude subscriptions or multiple retainers, as if these aren't sales? These are their financial accounts presenting all their sources of revenue from their IPs, so where do you think they're hiding the subscription income if not reporting it in their accounts?

In fact here's this from their September 2022 results briefing:

[CidHeiral]

The reason we don't get good QOL updates / server updates / fixed code is because all of that is expensive and FF14 is being used to funnel money into other projects that largely underwhelm / fail.

Didn't they just upgrade the servers last month?

[Raven2014]

Didn't they just upgrade the servers last month?

People don't see something like that, rather because the game haven't added the next QoL they want, it means the dev don't reinvest. It's the sort of self-made belief that becomes truth simply because enough people repeat it enough of time. The serve upgrade wasn't even the biggest deal in the last couple years. The server expansion that happened during COVID when hardware cost were 4-5 times above the market price were completely bonker. I won't guess where that money coming from, I just gonna guess it have to come from ... somewhere?

[Lieri]

Sorry but stocks value go up and down all the time. What matters is their actual finances and sales.