Due to the increasing influence of benign censorship and alignment with Western ideologies driven by DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) initiatives aimed at attracting investments, Square Enix has faced widespread consumer backlash.
This discontent, alongside the bastardization of Akira Toriyama’s legacy, has led to a growing refusal among fans to support the company’s products. As a result, it’s hardly surprising that Square Enix continues to struggle with declining profits and seems uncertain about the reasons behind its financial downturn.
In celebration of the recent PC launch of Final Fantasy XVI, Square Enix has released the long-awaited results briefing from May 13th. The company had placed high expectations on its flagship titles, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and Final Fantasy XVI, but during the financial briefing, Square Enix acknowledged that both games fell short of their targets.
“Although we released several new HD games, including our flagship titles, Final Fantasy XVI and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, unfortunately, we did not achieve the profit level we had hoped for.
Sales for MMO, smart devices, and PC browsers also fell short of the previous fiscal year’s results. Details will be explained for each business.
Starting this fiscal year, we have resumed disclosing operating income by segment.
HD games posted sales of 99.2 billion yen (up 20.7 billion yen year-on-year) and an operating loss of 8.1 billion yen (a 4 billion yen increase from the previous fiscal year).
In the fourth quarter, we released two titles, Foamstars and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, but the initial results did not meet our expectations, and we also recorded an operating loss due to factors such as a write-down of the content production account.
As MMO was in a transitional period prior to the release of the expansion pack ‘Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail,’ sales were 47.3 billion yen (down 6 billion yen year-on-year), and operating income was 19.3 billion yen (down 9.8 billion yen year-on-year).”
It was known last year that Final Fantasy XVI was a commercial failure, despite Square Enix initially celebrating the game’s diminishing global sales of three million units in its first week.
However, by the second week, sales in Japan plummeted dramatically. Released in June 2023, by August the game was frequently seen in stores with excessive physical copies being sold at discounted prices, an uncommon occurrence for a recently launched AAA title.
Final Fantasy XVI faced challenges due to its timed exclusivity agreement with Sony, launching only on the PlayStation 5. While Sony has acknowledged the PS5’s occasional underperformance, the console has still sold over 60 million units since its 2020 release.
Therefore, attributing the game’s underwhelming performance solely to platform exclusivity would be retarded, especially when Sony’s own first-party “exclusives” in the form of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is capable of selling well over 10 million copies.
Instead, the issue would be more due to Square Enix’s frequent release of Final Fantasy titles in recent years. The first part of the Final Fantasy VII Remake launched in April 2020, followed by Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion in December 2022, the aforementioned Final Fantasy XVI in June 2023, and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth in February 2024.
Despite being the most violent and gore-filled entry in the mainline series, Final Fantasy XVI also introduces a brief moment of man-on-man intimacy.
While this detail doesn’t overshadow the overall experience, the game suffers from an bland, Westernized narrative, crafted in collaboration with Western writers which lacks the depth of previous installments.
Compounding the issues, Final Fantasy XVI was designed with the English dub as the primary focus, resulting in noticeable lip-sync problems.
The game’s action-oriented combat, which Square Enix continues to push on players, feels paradoxically weightless yet cumbersome, even more so than in Final Fantasy XV.
Ultimately, the game became a parody of the Final Fantasy franchise, spearheaded by Yoshi-P, who, despite his success in reviving Final Fantasy XIV 1.0, seemed unable to translate that into creating a compelling mainline title of his own.
Yoshi-P sparked amusement when he outright denied the existence of an eventual PC version of Final Fantasy XVI, instead urging gamers to purchase a PS5 and buy his underperforming title. The plea came off as more of a desperate attempt to boost sales rather than a strategic move.
All signs indicate that the latest mainline installment, Final Fantasy XVI, fell short of expectations. Despite watering down the gameplay with an action combat system in place of the traditional turn-based mechanics, the game underperformed at launch.
While Square Enix repeatedly touted the sales success of previous titles, the only concrete news about Final Fantasy XVI was that it sold fewer units in its first week than Final Fantasy XV did in a single day. After announcing the three million units sold, the topic was quietly dropped and never revisited.
After bastardizing Final Fantasy VII with its 2020 remake, initially a temporary PlayStation 4 exclusive, Square Enix was eager to capitalize on the hype surrounding its sequel, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.
A video shared by Japanese outlet Famitsu gained significant attention, showcasing Tifa and Aerith relaxing in fairly ordinary bikinis. However, Square Enix, who mind you are heavily influenced by Western ideology and ESG initiatives seemingly couldn’t stand the social media buzz that “objectifies women.”
In response, they deliberately undermined their own momentum by retroactively releasing an update for Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade (2020) that altered certain dialogue and, notably, Tifa’s cowboy outfit to be less revealing, matching the toned-down designs set to appear in VII Rebirth.
Instead of prioritizing what makes games enjoyable, Square Enix has an “Ethics Department” that’s focused entirely upon destroying the appeal of their games, removing features like Tifa’s original breast size and jiggle physics. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth also introduced more tokenized representation, Black NPCs, in an attempt to diversify the game’s characters.
Following this retroactive censorship, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth performed even worse than Final Fantasy XVI, selling only 262,000 copies in Japan during its first week. Sales plummeted by nearly 90% in the second week. Despite Rebirth being a continuation of one of the most beloved games ever made, it still saw a 22% drop in Japanese launch sales compared to Final Fantasy XVI.
Notably, Square Enix has been unusually quiet about Rebirth‘s global sales figures, hinting that the game likely didn’t reach the three-million-unit mark in its first week and may still be struggling to match Final Fantasy XVI’s numbers.
May 13th, the date of the briefing, marks a pivotal moment when Square Enix appeared to be in a state of meltdown.
Before their earnings results were announced, Square Enix made a desperate move by introducing a multiplatform release strategy. However, this failed to prevent a significant stock plunge, driven by a sharp decline in net sales profits. The company’s HD game division, responsible for high-budget AAA titles, reported staggering losses of around $51 million.
Square Enix seems unwilling to acknowledge the reasons behind their struggles and course correct. The company appears to be rotting from within, aligning itself with foreign ideologies and political rhetoric for financial gain.
Their adherence to DEI criteria and ESG initiatives is undermining their success. Games like Forspoken, developed in collaboration with Sweet Baby Inc., stand out as some of the largest gaming flops in history, leading to the closure of its development studio just months after release.
Square Enix has also sold off several Western studios and intellectual properties, including Tomb Raider and Deus Ex, to the Embracer Group for a fraction of their real value. The company offloaded these franchises, along with Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal, for just $300 million. It goes without saying they’re desperate for cash.
The company is excessively focused on censorship, imposing diversity and inclusivity criteria on their products. This includes the removal of sex terminology from the upcoming Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake, which is also marred by censorship issues.
Square Enix are committed to creating safe and sanitized games for a broad audience, lacking femininity, freedom, and creativity, everything must conform to prevailing Western social norms which are fixated on homosexual representation and diversity.
As they align themselves with failing political ideologies, Square Enix is hemorrhaging funds. Once their lucrative success with Final Fantasy XIV runs its course, the company may very well face bankruptcy and they’ll have nobody to blame but themselves.
