Square Enix is blaming "weak" console game sales and the ongoing fiasco with online MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV for some pretty hefty financial losses, as it publishes its full earnings report.The Japanese publisher suffered a net loss of 12,043 million yen for the year, compared to a 9,509 million yen net profit the year before. Sales amounted to 125,271 million yen, a 34.8% drop from last year, while operating income fell 74.1% to 7,324 million yen.
CEO Yoichi Wada made no bones about blaming
Final Fantasy XIV, which was launched last year to a rather venomous reaction from PC players during the initial first month's trial period. Square Enix vowed to hold off billing customers until it updated the game to a satisfactory level - to this day, the MMORPG remains a free to play experience.
"Our Group experienced significantly lower sales and profit during the fiscal year mainly due to weak performance of console game titles released during the year as well as the impact of a continued delay in billing for a key online title, which was newly launched during the year," Wada said in a statement. "Key online title" being
Final Fantasy XIV, of course.
In better news,
Dragon Quest Monsters Joker 2 and
Kane & Lynch 2 Dog Days were some of the top performing titles for the company over the last year, bagging over a million sales each. And the publisher hopes to perform better over the coming year, predicting a 3.8% rise in sales and a net profit of 5,000 million yen.
See the earnings statement
here, and Wada's statement
here. You can also read SPOnG's
review of Final Fantasy XIV here - it's a corker.