Square Enix is undoubtedly one of the biggest Japanese studios in the gaming industry and also owns some of the most popular franchises such as Final Fantasy. However, the company has had its ups and downs in terms of its financial performance over the years for a variety of reasons. Now it seems that Square Enix is again going through a period of losses, and the company intends to overcome them with a new strategy: to put aside the exclusivity of its games and move to multi-platform releases.
This new approach was known through the presentation of the company’s financial results. A strategy called “Square Enix Reboots and wakes up“, consists of a three-year plan that aims to improve long-term growth. One of the main points of this plan is “aggressively pursuing a multi-platform strategy that includes Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox in PC“. What’s surprising is that, without specifically naming a Nintendo console, Square Enix implicitly refers to both Nintendo Switch as well as her rumored successor. However, while not going into details, the company also announced that as part of this new strategy, it has canceled several projects that do not suit it. In addition, the company clarified that it plans to change the release cadence with the intention of prioritizing quality over quantity.
The reasons for this change in focus are related to a sharp decline in the company’s profit in the fiscal year ended March 31. In the Digital Entertainment category, revenue fell 15.8% year-over-year, and in the HD Games subcategory, the company posted a loss of nearly $52 million, equivalent to a 70% drop. While the studio hasn’t singled out any specific games as being responsible, some of its recent titles have been exclusive PlayStation 5. This includes Final Fantasy XVI in the middle of last year, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth in February this year, and even names like Foam starsalso released in February and which has a version PlayStation 4.
Final Fantasy XVI there is already a version for PC is in development, but no console release for this title has been announced yet. Microsoft. It should be expected, in any case, that future games already announced by the company, such as Kingdom Hearts 4 in Dragon Quest XII: Flames of Destiny then released on multiple platforms from the start.
