This is of course the president talking to investor analysts, not to customers (gamers). They probably:
over promised investors on the potential return,
also maybe they spent too much on AAA development.
It could have sold 10 mil copies, but if the investors are not getting the return they were promised, or they spent too much time in development, it will still fall short of expectation. And this is factoring that Sony probably have paid for exclusivity and shouldered the co-marketing expenses.
Again, these are investor talk, not really aimed at us who are just playing the games. Konami briefly abandoned game developments, because pachinko was more profitable, and I’m pretty sure the investors were happy about it, until covid hit, and pachinko parlors were empty.
People should start seeing these comments from the business POV (which sucks, I know). Investors couldn’t care if the game is garbage, but if it could promised them astronomical returns, then they’d be totally okay with it.
And of course, looking at their top 10 shareholders, 7 out of 10 are financial institutions (banks & securities holdings), while 3 others are related to Fukushima’s family (Yasuhiro Fukushima was the founder of Enix, I assume Michiko is his wife, because she was in the filing when Enix absorbed Square, and Fukushima Holdings is an asset management owned by Yasuhiro)
Hmmm, what do all those banks want?
Edit: I also wanna point out that investor’s expectation in Japan or Asia is bit different, considering that they could have spent considerably smaller amount of money in developing mobile gacha games which are popular there, while reaping 10x profits from it. Thus the skewed expectations, and why the investor relations / sales expectations always sound baffling, and why ATLUS nickel and diming every single stuff.
If games keep failing to meet Square Enix's targets, then maybe they need to set more realistic targets. It feels like every Square Enix game, except for maybe FFVII Remake, gets an article about how it didn't meet their sales expectations.
Especially if they know the platform they’re launching on has a relatively small install base. They blamed that for why they couldn’t reach the target, instead of seeing the PS5 install base numbers and making a more realistic target.
Exactly. Seeing streams of the demo got me hyped for the game, but I don’t have a PS5, nor do I have any interest in buying a console currently.
All that hype is pretty much gone now. I might still get it once it releases for PC, but I’m not even certain about that at this point. If it had released for PC immediately, I would have 100% gotten it.
Probably trying to get bought by Sony, who has basically said they are looking for studios and IPs since the Microsoft/Activision deal is almost certainly happening.
Other studios that have been floated for Sony to potentially look at buying are Embracer and Kadokawa (FromSoft’s parent company).
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