It’s sometimes very easy to forget that video games aren’t just businesses; they’re businesses with a lot going on and have to deal with success and failure at multiple levels. For example, several of the biggest developers/publishers have stocks that they do their best to keep up, and thus stockholders for them to please. When a company does well, its stock tends to go up. In contrast, when they do poorly or something doesn’t meet expectations, their stock tends to fall a bit. Square Enix recently released an earnings report, which apparently didn’t make people too happy.
As noted by VGC, Square Enix dropped their latest earnings report on Friday, and at first, nothing happened. However, when the markets opened and closed in Japan today, the company’s stock dropped about 15%. It was one of the worst drops the company has had in three years!
So why did this happen? Well, the report further dives into the earnings statements and the stockholders meeting that followed, where the publisher noted that while Final Fantasy 16 did well, it didn’t meet the “high end” of expectations that Square Enix had.
President Takashi Kiryu addressed this and said that the PS5 was still dealing with some “adoption issues” by gamers and that he hoped they would be settled before too long and thus help the game in the long term.
This situation might confuse some people, as FFXVI sold over 3 million units in just a week, which wasn’t bad at all, and it’s definitely sold more since its release in late June. It’s true that compared to other titles in the franchise, the game didn’t sell as well, but some circumstances can’t be ignored with those other ones.
For example, the newest title was a PS5 exclusive, which meant that if you wanted to play the game, you had only this one system to play it on, and unlike other franchise entries, the PS5 is still growing its player base to a certain extent. However, it should be noted that the PS5 recently crossed 40 million units sold, so one has to wonder whether another element led to those gamers not buying the title.
Another thing to ponder is whether the publisher set their expectations too high. Most games would kill to sell a few million units in a single week, and yet when this title did, it caused some stocks to go down. This goes to prove that the business side of gaming is very complicated.
