Square Enix Posts Loss, Blames Final Fantasy XIV

Video game publisher Square Enix has announced pretty bad financial results for the fiscal year that ended on March 31, saying that it has been hit both by smaller sales of core titles and by problems linked to launching the subscription-based component of the MMO Final Fantasy XIV.

Overall sales for Square Enix have been down by a surprising 34.8 percent, reaching 125.27 billion Yen, which is the equivalent of 1.55 billion dollars at the current exchange rate.

Meanwhile the company went from posting a profit of 9.51 billion Yen during the previous fiscal year to reporting a loss of 12.04 billion or about 149.32 million dollars.

This comes after the company initially expected to perform well during the 2011 fiscal year, on the strength of continuing sales for its biggest titles and the launch of a new Final Fantasy game.

Yoichi Wada, who is the president of Square Enix, has issued a statement saying, “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.”

He added, “In the fiscal year ending March 31, 2012, we are very focused on the group's key strategic initiatives of globalization, becoming 'network centric,' and strengthening our own-IPs as we work to generate a substantial earnings recovery from the fiscal year ending March 31, 2013 and beyond.”

Final Fantays XIV, the MMO that was launched so far just on the PC, has been a disaster so far for Square Enix, mainly because of technical problems and design mistakes and the launch for the PlayStation 3 has been pushed back indefinitely.

The company has promised that it will continue working on polishing the experience and will only begin charging subscriptions when the player base is satisfied with their efforts.

One key title for Square Enix during this calendar year is Deus Ex: Human Revolution.