Square Enix's latest game has not fared well: sales fell 18.4% y/y in the three months from April to June due to a lack of major releases. Final Fantasy 14 is meant to be one of the main factors keeping the company's "Digital Entertainment" finances positive.

Square Enix stated in its latest earnings report that MMO games were one of the only ones to see net sales and profits increase over the previous year; MMOs accounted for 68.4% of operating income, while mobile games accounted for 31.1%. Interestingly, these figures do not include Dawntrail, the latest expansion for FF14, which was released just last month. The usual pre-expansion lull didn't seem to affect the 12-year-old MMO all that much, and it wouldn't be surprising to see profits rise even more in the next quarter.

In fact, Square Enix's MMOs have been strong for some time, especially after the success of the Endwalker expansion in 2021. In its last full-year financial results (FY2024), the company posted a profit. Square Enix has highlighted FF14 and Dragon Quest 10 as the main games in this category.

In May, Square Enix announced that it was essentially rebooting its game development strategy after releases like Final Fantasy 16 and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth failed to meet profit expectations. Part of the new strategy is to release games on multiple platforms. It should be noted that in the previous full-year report, which included both games, sales were fine, but not profitable due to increased development costs. Now, I am not going to say that the same day PC releases of these two games would have prevented this from happening, but that is not entirely true. Maybe everyone and their dog would have been lining up to see the new Aeris mod that was shredded.

I am happy to see that the critically acclaimed MMO FF14 is probably contributing enough to Square Enix's bottom line that its president, Takashi Kiryu, is not betting entirely on generative AI. Still, the company laid off employees in the U.S. and Europe earlier this year as part of a "restructuring" program. It was yet another blow to the industry, which saw a series of devastating layoffs last year. Successful MMOs only make their numbers look good, not smarter businesses.