Posted in: Games, Games Finance, Video Games | Tagged: Dragon Quest Monsters Super Light, Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, Final Fantasy XV, Kingdom Hearts Union X, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Square Enix

Square Enix Fiscal Year Report Shows Major Growth Thanks To Final Fantasy XV And Rise Of The Tomb Raider

Square Enix have released their 2016 Fourth Quarter and 2016 end of year results, which has some shocking information included, considering all the other Square news that's hit in the last few days. Square's year end financial results are pretty damn impressive, with a positive 20.0% increase in net sales over 2015.

In terms of their digital entertainment, which makes up the bulk of Square's business, they credited the major launches of blockbuster series titles like Final Fantasy XV and the PlayStation 4 version of Rise of the Tomb Raider for the success, alongside strong download sales of previously released catalog titles, which led to a material increase of net sales and operating income in the area of console games, compared to the prior fiscal year.

"In the area of massively multiplayer online role playing games, revenues from those operations have been showing steady performance while net sales and operating income declined significantly compared to the prior fiscal year mainly due to the absence of expansion disk releases during the fiscal year ended March 31, 2017." If you're wondering about that vaguely worded paragraph, don't be. It basically says that sales of Final Fantasy XIV: Online are growing steadily despite not getting a major push in the 2016 fiscal year. Thanks to the Stormblood expansion slated to hit in just over a month, it's likely we'll see FFXIV start pulling some real weight again in the first half of fiscal year 2017.

Square also name dropped their mobile titles as "increas[ing] significantly compared to the prior fiscal year primarily thanks to the strong performance of existing major titles of native application games on smartphones" like Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, Hoshi No Dragon Quest, Dragon Quest Monsters Super Light and the overseas expansions of FFBE and Kingdom Hearts Union X.

That FFXV, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Square's mobile titles helped boost sales is no major shocker. That their Fiscal Year revenue was up 20% though, now that is some awesome news for Square Enix fans.

But it doesn't really account for them letting go of Io Interactive. Sure, the studio saw a major loss for the company, but Square's overall performance was enough to offset that. Likely, there's something going on here that we're only getting hints of. What exactly that might be is well beyond our ability to know at this point, though we may get more details in the coming days.

You can read the full report here.

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