Square Enix announced its financial results for the first nine months of the fiscal year, related to the period between April and December 2024.
According to the press release, net sales for the whole company were 248,519 million yen (down 3.5% year-on-year), while operating income was 33,381 million yen (down 4.4％ year-on-year).
Moving on to the Digital Entertainment business, net sales were 160,386 million yen (down 10.7％ year-on-year), while operating income was 27,689 million (down 9.9％ year-on-year).
This was caused by the HD games sub-segment (non-live-service games for consoles and PC) which failed to generate as many sales as games like Final Fantasy XVI, Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster, and Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince achieved in the previous year.
However, the operating income of the sub-segment improved due to lower development and marketing costs and stronger sales of Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake than expected.
In the MMO sub-segment, both sales and operating income grew year-on-year due to the launch of Final Fantasy XIV’s expansion, Dawntrail.
Games for smartphone and browser games declined on both counts year-on-year due to the weakness of existing games and more. This sub-segment is identified by Square Enix as the main culprit of the poor performance, and its decline in profit is defined as “sharp.”
Going into more detail, HD games recorded 60 billion yen (down 6.8 billion year-on-year) in net sales and actually lost money again. Specifically the operating loss was 4.6 billion yen (compared to 2.7 billion in the previous fiscal year).
MMOs recorded 44 billion yen in net sales, up 9.2 billion year-on-year. Operating income was 17.3 billion yen, up 2.9 billion year-on-year.
Games for smart devices and browsers recorded 56.3 billion yen in net sales (down 21.7 billion year-on-year) and 5.6 billion yen in operating income, down 7.9 billion year-on-year.
Interestingly, if we look at unit sales, Square Enix actually sold more games (between HD and MMO) than in the previous fiscal year, 20.01 million copies compared to 18.51 million copies. Digital downloads were up (15.99 million copies vs 14.32 million copies) and physical sales were slightly down (4.03 million copies vs 4.19 million copies.
If you’re interested in comparing today’s results with historical data, you can check out our article about the previous quarter’s financial results, announced in November.
Other gaming companies have also already announced their financial results this quarter, including Take-Two, Sega, Bandai Namco, Electronic Arts, Nintendo, Marvelous Entertainment, Koei Tecmo, Capcom, Microsoft, and Konami.
