“It seems inevitable that there will be stories two weeks from now about how tell first did not meet Square Enix’s revenue expectations,” I wrote when the demo for Isekai romp came out on PC. How wrong I was! It took six and a half weeks.
Square Enix’s latest financials say, “Reviews for Forspoken… have struggled,” and its sales are “faint”.
The report note that Forspoken “has received positive feedback for its action features, including parkour and combat abilities, so it has delivered results that help us improve our ability to develop games.” other in the future.
“That said, its sales have been lackluster, and while the performance of new titles with release dates in February and March will be the ultimate deciding factor, we see risks. significant reduction to its earnings for fiscal year 2023/3.”
Forspoken isn’t the only game underperforming. According to the report, “many new SME titles that we launched this year have not performed as well as we expected.” No specific game has been named, but in recent months Square Enix has released a number of remakes such as Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion, Romancing Saga: Minstrel Song Remastered and Tactics Ogre: Reborn, as well. like new mid-sized games like Harvestella, The Diofield Chronicle, Various Daylife, Voice Of Cards: The Beasts Of Burden, Triangle Strategy, Star Ocean: The Divine Force and, uh, PowerWash Simulator, possibly the best in this number.
That’s not even a quirk for these other games, many of which are good. My only gripe is that they have terrible names and often non-existent marketing.
Early last year, Square Enix sold their western studio for the Embracer . Groupincluding Eidos and Crystal Dynamics.
Alice B finds many errors in her “challenge” live assessment, and liked it so much that she wanted “a sequel where they make things better.” That seems less likely now.
