Square Enix: Forspoken Sales 'Lacklustre' As Other Titles Also Underperform - Hardcore Gamer

hardcoregamer.com:

In not mincing their words, Square Enix have admitted that sales of Luminous Production’s first (and only, following the studio’s absorption into the company) title Forspoken — which released last January for PS5 & PC — have been as they put it “lacklustre”. The comments come during the company’s most recent financial results briefing for Q1-Q3 of this financial year — originally scheduled last month but has now been made public — in which they go on to state that “reviews of Forspoken…have been challenging”. A reference to the game’s middling reception prior to release — a game which we ourselves weren’t too hot on. Despite some positives here and there; something which Square Enix note, acknowledging that “the game has also received positive feedback on its action features, including its parkour and combat capabilities…that will lead to improvement of our development capabilities of other games in the future”

However, Square Enix didn’t stop there when it came to their less-than-positive perception of most recent performances. Noting that “many of the new small and mid-sized titles we launched this year did not perform as well as we had expected”. Though they didn’t go into specifics and highlight any names in particular, the list of releases from the past financial year include the likes of: Live A Live, The Diofield Chronicle, Valkyrie Elysium, Star Ocean: The Divine Force, Harvestella and more. So while you can’t fault Square Enix for releasing a significant amount of titles as of late, it would seem few (if any) have reached company expectations as far as commercial performance goes.

The company ends by stating that while titles released during the last quarter of this financial year “will be the ultimate