Square Enix, developers of massive franchises like Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy, has recently released their earnings report for 2014. The news is good for the Japanese developer, as they are very firmly in the green. Considering the financial problems that the studio was having just a couple of years ago, it's good to see them back on their feet.
Square Enix ended the year with ¥ 155,023 and $1,506,254 in net sales, while total assets come in at ¥ 216,617 and $2,104,714 respectively.
Square Enix president Yosuke Matsuda had some words about the studio's progress in 2014:
“For the fiscal year ended March 2014, we actively reformed our development policy and organization system, focusing on our European and North American studios, and simultaneously worked on earnings recovery through our existing lineup. Sales of console game titles, including Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster, Thief (Europe and North America only) and Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition, were better than our original plan.”
Matsuda, after reporting on the hard data, then went on to talk about the studio's future. Apparently the vision that Matsuda has for Square Enix is to focus more on free-to-play games that feature microtransactions.
“One major approach we are currently taking is to apply variable pricing models, such as F2P (free to play) games, to the HD games area. We are already introducing such models and have achieved success in several cases,”
It will be interesting to see how this new information affects the release of games like Kingdom Hearts 3 and Final Fantasy 15.
