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Image credit: Square Enix
A transcript of Square Enix's August Q&A session has been published, where the company's new president Takashi Kiryu pushed back against rumors, saying Final Fantasy 16 had met the developer's expectations.
At the beginning of last month, Bloomberg reported that Square Enix wasn't very happy with the game's sales. According to its sources, Kiryu linked it with the slow adoption of PlayStation 5 – the only platform Final Fantasy 16 was launched on.
The performance of its titles overall resulted in a 78.5% decline in operating profit and Square Enix's shares dropping. Naturally, FF16 is not the only one to blame: there are also Marvel’s Avengers and Forspoken, which were met coldly by players.
Now, the transcript (via VGC) reveals that Kiryu was fine with Final Fantasy 16's numbers. After all, the title sold three million copies in the first week.
“This achievement was in line with our expectations,” Kiryu said.
In the session, he also shared his desire to improve Square Enix's profitability by working primarily on its HD games. This aligns with what Bloomberg's sources shared before: Kiryu is going to reduce the number of smaller titles and focus on big-budget games. Moreover, he wants to overhaul the process of assigning producers, but it will take time.
"In addition, rather than solely attempting to create brand‐new IPs, we intend take a nuanced approach to investment whereby we also identify existing IPs with the potential to be upgraded to AAA status, taking ROI into account as well. In so doing, we hope to establish greater depth to the layers of our portfolio."
Finally, the president wants to continue to grow the company's Publication, Amusement, and Merchandising segments in an attempt to improve profitability.
Hopefully, all these measures will help Square Enix get back on its feet. Meanwhile, we are looking forward to the PC version of Final Fantasy 16 and two story DLCs.
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