There are many “jokes” within the gaming industry that diehard gamers love to point out. There was one about how Nintendo was only a “family company” and wouldn’t do M-rated games until they finally did. In modern times, Ubisoft is constantly blasted for making video games that are all “basically the same, just with different skins,” and then there’s Square Enix. The publisher is infamous for making great games but has unrealistic expectations of what those games will sell. Thus, they often “don’t meet expectations.” However, with the Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake, things finally changed for the better.
This reveal came from the latest financial results for Square Enix, which revealed that Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake had not only sold well but did better “than initial assumptions.” That should tell you everything you need to know about Square Enix right there. Despite the popularity of this RPG franchise, especially in Japan, the company didn’t think that it would do better than other properties, especially a certain one that was the company’s “Game of the Year contender,” yet didn’t sell that well overall.
In contrast, this remake not only sold incredibly well, but it sold over a million copies in Japan alone! That’s very impressive and speaks to how well the other two upcoming remakes will do when they’re launched later on. However, in contrast to this game’s success, the multitude of Square Enix mobile titles that focused on live-service elements didn’t do well at all. Thus, when you look at the financial period numbers, Square Enix took a huge loss once again.
If that sounds familiar, it’s because Square Enix revealed last year that it had lost so much money due to bad business decisions that it had to undergo a huge “restructuring” to try and ensure that this wouldn’t happen again. One of the parts of that restructuring is going multiplatform with multiple titles that it’s producing versus strictly being exclusive to platforms like the PS5. That was one of the reasons the second part of the “Remake Saga” only did decently and didn’t match the sales of its predecessor upon release.
Square Enix had a bad habit of thinking its “AAA exclusives” would sell well on name alone, which was overselling the name-brand value of its main RPG franchise. In contrast, with the Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake, the original team worked hard to keep the game as it was before, just with better graphics and other improvements, and gamers resonated with it. Hopefully, Square Enix can learn from this experience.
