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Square Enix: Forspoken Sales Were Lackluster, Many Small and Mid Games Underperformed

Draugoth

Draugoth

Member
Forspoken_20220309_12.webp

Square Enix says Forspoken sales have been lackluster, and many small and mid-sized titles "did not perform as well as we had expected" | RPG Site

Square Enix financials in their HD Games segment don't look too hot.
www.rpgsite.net www.rpgsite.net

The briefing primarily discusses the financial results for Q1-Q3 of the fiscal year ending March 31, 2023, focusing on the most recent quarter of October through December 2022. However, given that the briefing itself took place a week after the release of Forspoken, Square Enix also makes comment about the recent RPG from the soon-defunct Luminous Productions.

On page 3 of the outline, while a specific title is not mentioned, Square Enix President Yosuke Matsuda (who will leave the position next Summer) stated the following about the slate of "small and mid-sized titles" that released in the current fiscal year.

Net sales declined YoY in the HD Games sub-segment, partly because the release of major titles a year earlier had created a challenging YoY hurdle, but also because many of the new small and mid-sized titles we launched this year did not perform as well as we had expected.
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Reviews of "FORSPOKEN," which we released on January 24, 2023, have been challenging. However, the game has also received positive feedback on its action features, including its parkour and combat capabilities, so it has yielded results that will lead to improvement of our development capabilities of other games in the future. That said, its sales have been lackluster, and while the performance of new titles with February and March release dates will be the ultimate determinant, we see considerable downside risk to our FY2023/3 earnings.
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Aenima

Aenima

Member
Net sales declined YoY in the HD Games sub-segment, partly because the release of major titles a year earlier had created a challenging YoY hurdle, but also because many of the new small and mid-sized titles we launched this year did not perform as well as we had expected.
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I dont think hes refering to Forespoken. Forspoken is not a small or mid-sized tittle for Square-Enix.

Edit: Nevermind, the Quote about Forsepoken was just below. :p
 
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YukiOnna

YukiOnna

Member
It's disappointing to hear titles like Diofield, Harvestella, and Tactics Ogre likely underperformed, but they all launched literally a couple of weeks apart at full price and not too much marketing, so I'm not sure what they expected.

Hopefully Octopath II and Theatrhythm end up performing better in the long run.

Aenima said:
I dont think hes refering to Forespoken. Forspoken is not a small or mid-sized tittle for Square-Enix.
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No, they mentioned Forspoken separately just below.
 
blacktout

blacktout

Member
Aenima said:
I dont think hes refering to Forespoken. Forspoken is not a small or mid-sized tittle for Square-Enix.
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It's a little confusing how it's presented here, but the first quote is about the underperformance of "small and mid-sized titles" in October through December last year and the second quote is about Forspoken's "lackluster" sales.

So you're dealing with two different but related topics.

Edit: Never mind, just saw your edit, lol.
 
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Mibu no ookami

Mibu no ookami

Member
Poor overall strategy and execution from them

I probably would have purchased Chrono Cross had they put any effort into it.

I probably would have purchased Octopath Traveller 2 if they had made 1 available first, but they probably made agreements with Nintendo foreclosing that. Similarly, I might have looked into Triange Strategy. Exclusive deals like this are really hurting Square Enix in the long run.

Star Ocean Divine Force has a Metacritic rating of 69. Valkyrie Elysium has a 65...

Stranger of Paradise looked like PS3 garbage from day 1 as did Forspoken.
 
S

shiru

Member
I don't think anyone should be surprised the games they released didn't set the charts on fire. Seriously, Harvestella? Anyone expected anything from that?
 
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Zephir

Zephir

Member
Honestly, is there a single game, outside Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy, that satisfy Square-Enix obscure and outlandish "expectations"? I bet that all those games sold "fine", but SE always expects the impossible and even when that happens, with millions unit sold (Tomb Raider reboot) it's not enough
 
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LordCBH

LordCBH

Member
I’ll try it when I find it for $10. But that demo and that annoying ass main character aren’t worth more than that.
 
Mr Hyde

Mr Hyde

Member
All patched up and at 35-40 dollars I can see Forspoken moving some units. But Square Enix needs a reality check. They can't half ass all of their releases except Final Fantasy, and then expect us to pay full 60-70 dollars for it. Star Ocean, Valkyrie Elysium, DioField Chronicles, should all be 30-40 dollars. Forspoken was in a bad shape on day 1 and they expect us to go in at 70? Fuck that. If they are going for premium prices they better release a polished and premium product.
 
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Azurro

Azurro

Member
I wonder if Valkyrie Elysium underperformed. I'm actually enjoying that now, while I had to force myself to finish Star Ocean 6.
 
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Keihart

Keihart

Member
Just when i thought that Squeenix was finally out of their dellusional phase wanting everything to be a hit.
If you are gonna make low budget or experimental games, adjust espectations acordingly, Squaresoft was no stranger to do so back in the day.

Forespoken had no business getting a bloated budget considering what is doing.
 
AJUMP23

AJUMP23

Member
The game looked terrible and every trailer made it look worse from the beginning Highlighting the effusive dialog was a mistake.
 
Keihart

Keihart

Member
Mr Hyde said:
All patched up and at 35-40 dollars I can see Forspoken moving some units. But Square Enix needs a reality check. They can't half ass all of their releases except Final Fantasy, and then expect us to pay full 60-70 dollars for it. Star Ocean, Valkyrie Elysium, DioField Chronicles, should all be 30-40 dollars. Forspoken was in a bad shape on day 1 and they expect us to go in at 70? Fuck that. If they are going for premium prices they better release a polished and premium product.
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this too, B or maybe AA tier productions getting dropped at 60 with no regional pricing either.
I like Square developing more variety but, make them with small budgets and adjust acordingly, they are perfectly capable of doing so looking at their switch releases.
 
DaGwaphics

DaGwaphics

Member
KungFucius said:
The sales were not lackluster, their expectations were out of line. The game was a new IP and got shitty reviews. It sold accordingly.
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That seems to be a big issue for the entire industry. They spend too much for the quality of work produced and then expect too much return from it.

Hollywood went through the same thing for a while. They'll have to adjust to the idea that most games do not have a chance of becoming blockbuster releases and work with more realistic numbers in mind.
 
Dr. Wilkinson

Dr. Wilkinson

Member
They don't seem to want to call out games by name, but it definitely seems like Harvestella and DQ Treasures last holiday didn't have the impact they were hoping for. Nintendo pushed Harvestella hard over the summer as a big exclusive, even doing a Treehouse Live event for it in August, but it launched in November with a whimper. Shame too, it was a pretty solid AA game. And definitely a lot of content.
 
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Rush2112

Rush2112

Member
This game failed because it reminded everyone how shit FFXV was. The woke main character and her cringeworthy lines didnt help, either.
 
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graywolf323

graywolf323

Member
I hope we still get a sequel to Diofield & this doesn’t end Star Ocean (give us Star Ocean 2 on modern platforms in the West already Square-Enix!)
 
ToTTenTranz

ToTTenTranz

Member
To be honest, I never thought Forspoken would turn out so bad.
One would think that the reliance on feedback from focus groups would prevent a disastrous launch like that. Yet they did manage to make an expensive game with bad graphics, bad performance, lackluster production values, annoying main characters and mediocre gameplay.

I wonder if we'll ever get to know how Luminous Productions screwed so badly. They somehow managed to make a game that performs and looks worse than Final Fantasy XV on much better hardware.

Here's a team of 150 people who've been working on an engine for 11 years, supposedly dedicated to improving the engine for next-gen visuals. They released the fantastic Agni's Philosophy realtime trailer 10 years ago, then the Witch tech demo in 2015, and finally the great looking Final Fantasy XV in 2016 for 1.3-1.8TFLOPs console which proved they could make actual games with their engine.
Yet here we are 7 years after FF XV and they manage to release a game that practically looks worse than FFXV on 10 TFLOPs consoles? It doesn't even make sense.
 
Jinzo Prime

Jinzo Prime

Member
ToTTenTranz said:
To be honest, I never thought Forspoken would turn out so bad.
One would think that the reliance on feedback from focus groups would prevent a disastrous launch like that. Yet they did manage to make an expensive game with bad graphics, bad performance, lackluster production values, annoying main characters and mediocre gameplay.

I wonder if we'll ever get to know how Luminous Productions screwed so badly. They somehow managed to make a game that performs and looks worse than Final Fantasy XV on much better hardware.

Here's a team of 150 people who've been working on an engine for 11 years, supposedly dedicated to improving the engine for next-gen visuals. They released the fantastic Agni's Philosophy realtime trailer 10 years ago, then the Witch tech demo in 2015, and finally the great looking Final Fantasy XV in 2016 for 1.3-1.8TFLOPs console which proved they could make actual games with their engine.
Yet here we are 7 years after FF XV and they manage to release a game that practically looks worse than FFXV on 10 TFLOPs consoles? It doesn't even make sense.
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They must have lost a lot of their key talent to Square's other divisions and to other companies. We know FF15's director was fired, but how many other's were put on high priority projects within Square, like FF7R anf FF16?
 
E

EN250

Member
Forspoken was cursed, every new showing turned worse than the one before it, the character is a girl with "the attitude" that curses a lot because writers can't do scripts without the awful wedonesque dialogue and edgy curse words because "we mature yo"

The settings, the character and the dialogue couldn't clash in the worse possible way, it'd be like watching a fantasy movie where the main character is a Duke Nukem copy/paste and the script is made by reeeeee users

As for the AA games don't doing good, well what do you expect, releasing one after the other with no room to breathe and with 0 push...
 
Fbh

Fbh

Member
Maybe release better games? And price them accordingly?
I'm not saying Metacritic is the ultimate arbiter of game quality but many of their recent games have struggled to even get past the 70 metascore barrier, with mostly negative user reviews too.
A game being "small or mid sized" is a justification for simpler visuals or a smaller scope but the story, gameplay, art direction, music, characters, etc should still be solid.

Also maybe your 2D pixel art game shouldn't cost the same (or nearly as much) as Elden Ring and Hogwarts Legacy? Specially if you are going to pump out 2 or 3 of them a year.
 
Stuart360

Stuart360

Member
Forspoken has 5.5k user reviews on Steam, after nearly 7 weeks. Thats pitiful for a AAA game, especially when the game has a lot of negative reviews as users are more likely to post a review when they have problems with a game.
 
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