Square Enix has released a three-year Medium-term Business Plan
and its financial report for fiscal year 2024
And while it's mixed results for the developer, it has addressed how its going to try and improve things.
Most notably, the company has revealed a brand new "four-pillar" plan, and under one of these pillars, it will "aggressively pursue a multiplatform strategy that includes Nintendo platforms, PlayStation, Xbox,
and PCs". Not just Switch, but "Nintendo platforms". Which is an obvious statement to make, of course, given that we are slowly approaching the Switch successor's official announcement. Square wants to "build an environment where more customers can enjoy our titles" and that includes AAA games and major franchises.
While Square Enix does release many games on multiple systems — for example, we've seen the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster series, Octopath Traveler II, and Star Ocean: The Second Story R all come to Switch alongside PlayStation and PC releases (though the former came out on PC first) — other times, games are locked to a single platform.https://www.nintendolife.com/games/nintendo-switch/dragon_quest_monsters_the_dark_prince
Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince, for example, is a Switch exclusive. And, on PlayStation, Final Fantasy XVI and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth are both timed console exclusives, which has been the subject of a lot of discussion from fans given that both titles, particularly Rebirth, seem to have underperformed.
Multiplatform plans are just part of the picture, of course. Square also plans to shift "from quantity to quality", build an "optimal portfolio", increase and step up with digital sales, rebuild its overseas business divisions, and revamp its policies for "human resource allocation & investment".
While digital entertainment sales and net sales are very slightly up on 2023's figures, profits attributable to owners of the parent are down 69.7% compared to the last fiscal year. The report acknowledged this is partially due to the "disposal of content" the company had previously alluded to, and here, it spells things out much more plainly: "These losses stemmed from the termination of development efforts for some key pieces of content in the Digital Entertainment segment."
