Square Enix Loses Nearly $2 Billion in Value Since Final Fantasy 16

ign.com:

Square Enix has lost nearly $2 billion in value since the launch of Final Fantasy 16 in June, and a new report has cast doubt on the company’s ability to recover.

Shares in the company have plummeted nearly 30% since Final Fantasy 16 came out on June 22, closing on September 13 at their lowest point since May last year.

The PlayStation 5 exclusive sold three million copies during launch week, a figure that sparked a debate online about whether it had met Square Enix’s sales targets. Square Enix told IGN in July sales of Final Fantasy 16 were “extremely strong”, and insisted the game had sold well relative to the PS5 install base.

IGN sources familiar with the performance of Final Fantasy 16 confirmed sales had slowed considerably since launch but that the game was not yet considered a disaster. Earlier in September, Square Enix announced Final Fantasy 16 is set for two paid DLC expansions, and confirmed a PC port was officially in development.

A new report from Bloomberg painted a bleak picture of Square Enix, which reported a sharp profit decline in August. Analysts told the publication that Final Fantasy 16 failed to make up for the poor performance of previous Square Enix flops, such as Marvel’s Avengers and Forspoken, and mobile games that were shut down soon after launch.

The root of the problem, sources told Bloomberg, is that producers were given “full reign” over the scope and direction of projects, whose goals can shift “without warning”. The upshot of this is volatility in the quality of the final product.

Square Enix has a new CEO, Takashi Kiryu, who intends to reduce the number of smaller games in the works to focus on big-budget games that have a greater chance of making an impact on the company’s bottom line.