Today Square Enix announced its financial results for the first six months of the fiscal year, from April to September 2021.
In the table below you can check out the result for the whole company, showing 2.2% decline in sales and 7.9% decline in operating profit.
The overall results of Square Enix mirror those of the Digital Entertainment segment. Sales were ¥129,451 million, down 9.1% year-on-year, while operating profit was ¥29,499 million, down 12.8% year-on-year.
In the HD games subsegment releases including Outriders, NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139…, NEO: The World Ends with You, and Life is Strange: True Colors did not manage to achieve the same level of sales as last year’s comparable period, which included the launch of Final Fantasy VII Remake and Marvel’s Avengers.
Games for smartphone and PC browsers also declined in sales partly due to “lackluster performances by existing titles” using Square Enix’s own words.
On the other hand, the real champion is Final Fantasy XIV, which caused sales of the MMO segment to improve year-on-year due to the “sharp growth in the number of monthly paying subscribers.”
If we think that this happened before the launch of the new expansion Endwalker, it’s easy to envision what kind of powerhouse Final Fantasy XIV has become, and why it’s now the most profitable game of the franchise
If you’d like to compare, you can check out the results for the previous quarter, released in August.