Square Enix: Forspoken Launch Sales Were 'Lackluster' - Sales
by William D'Angelo , posted on 10 March 2023 / 5,205 Views
Square Enix president Yosuke Matsuda during a financial results briefing held on February 3 and just posted in English revealed that launch sales for Forspoken have been "lackluster."
"Reviews of Forspoken, which we released on January 24, 2023, have been challenging," said Matsuda. "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."
Square Enix recently announced it will merge its wholly owned subsidiary Luminous Productions with Square Enix Corporation on May 1.
"The merger is part of the Company's efforts to further bolster the competitive prowess of the Group's development studios, a goal set forth under its current medium-term business strategy," said Square Enix at the time.
"Square Enix Co. has developed numerous AAA high-definition (HD) games and possesses a wealth of intellectual property (IP) and content. Luminous Productions is meanwhile equipped not only with AAA title development capabilities but also technical expertise in areas such as game engine development. Combining the two entities will further enhance the Group’s ability to develop HD games."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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I’m shocked. Shocked! Well not that shocked.
Safe to say we all saw this coming.
Which should surprise no one.
Don't they say this about 9/10ths of the games they release?
I remember when I was so looking forward after seeing the first trailer came out under Project Athia. Really unfortunate how it turned out.
But I'll still look forward to it when its free for PS Plus lol
Expected when the game looked ugly, bland and empty
I can move sales with my freaking mind!
Honestly think the game looked good and certain things about the writers actually made me hopeful. But the demo put me right off. The controls were all over the place, it thumped me into already have levels and just told me to explore and if thrre's anything a game shouldn't do it's a demo based on it's open world. Then things about the story were appearing or at least the main characters dialogue.
I'm not sure what SquEnix can do of late to help themselves. Of their releases, we've had a fair few failures after failures. FF16 will do well based on name alone, Star Ocean and Valkyrie Profile games were made at a budget but came out a long time after the last. KH and Dragon Quest remain good. Yet Diofield seemed to get next to no promotion. They seem to be falling back on proven series and their new ones are failing, which is a shame because they are at least trying with some.
Harvestella was quite good, I thought.
In other news, poop smells bad.
forspeak - To injure or cause bad luck through immoderate praise or flattery ; to affect with the curse of an evil tongue , which brings ill luck upon all objects of its praise.
Huh, seems the game was fittingly named.
Jeez, I wonder why.
Did anyone expect Forspoken to do well?
i picked it up. i gave up on all the side stuff after few hours is way to much very repetitive activities i ended up just focusing on the story, luckily i completed it just before hogwarts legacy come out so i could sell it on ebay for most my money back. im a collector but its not one i will ever play again
From conception the game was destined to be a hard sell. Projectile magic combat is not an easy thing to sell, neither is a lifeless open world in 2023... Tonally they wanted to pull from a netflix teen drama, but took none of the colourful excitment, romance or heart that make those things popular.
Even if executed perfectly I think there are types of games that really need a managed AA budget and this is one of them. The type of game that is considered a mild success once it reaches 2m. This is something a lot of companies are struggling to realise at the moment. Calisto Protocol is another one that comes to mind.
Game pass here we come... (maybe even sooner than expected)
Sony paid for a 2 year exclusivity deal. Square won't pay back Sony just to launch it early on Gamepass. Might be Gamepass day one 2 years after the PS5 launch, but I doubt Xbox would pay them for it as meh as it seems to be.
Yeah, it's either Game Pass deal up front after 2 years, or Square won't think it'll be worth porting the game to Xbox.
Xbox won't think it'll be worth porting the game to Xbox.
Haha! Yeah you right!
You didn't read my post, did you? Sony only paid for console exclusivity. Forspoken is already on the Xbox store on PC. As long as the exclusivity contract didn't include anything about putting the game on Game Pass for PC (which I doubt as Sony only tries to keep the game from the Xbox console as proven with this console exclusivity), they could release it on Game Pass anytime.
I reckon is kojima who decided to elt it be on gamepass not Sony. Who knows Sony could have had contract for x amount of years. Due Sony contract with forspoken its the cause of forspoken downfall. That kidn if game is very niche. With the price of 70 usd not many will pay for it at that price but more will try it out if it was on gamepass. Me included lol.
It's on pc but that's not enough. Nsony will never allow it to be on gamepass especially when they have got a contract out. Sony already hates gamepass as seen with recent abk and the thought of cod being on gamepass day 1. I have heard that they paid for couple if years for cod to not appear on gamepass.
The downfall of forspoken has 0artly due to sony preventing it for reaching a larger audience with their exclusivity deal. Don't know if that's true
Then why is MLB The Show on Game Pass (day one btw.). Same could be said about Death Stranding which is also on Game Pass (for PC). Guess Sony didn't care enough to get the full publishing rights to keep the game from the Xbox store.
Obviously the contract didn't rule out for SE to make Forspoken available on the Xbox store so why would Sony prevent them from putting it on Game Pass (for PC) when it's already on the MS ecosystem?
Also I don't see what CoD has to do with any of it. CoD is bigger than all SE games combined. Sony tries to block the big fish and not the small insignificant ones.
That's because it was mlb company that wanted to expand to other consoles. It wasn't out of Sony kind hearts. They don't own the ip.
Again death stranding was out of kojima decision. U can't tell kojima what to do and where the games go. He's actually a fairer person of the lot as he's also maiig games that's exclusive to xbox. Very few are like him.
Its only on ms windows. Epic and steam.. The reason why I mentioned cod is because Sony has made the argument during the abk acquisition that if cod comes to gamepass day 1 they are afraid that sony fans who buy cod on ps will be swayed to come to xbox because it will be free on gamepass vs paying 70 usd. It would be exactly the same if forspoken were allowed to be on gamepass pc. Sony don't like that scenario. He whole abk arguement for Sony is about cod. We have seen them complain being on gamepass day 1, to ms sabotaging ps version, to ms not giving cod to ps Indefinitely and so on. Let's be honest, Sony problem is gamepass and nothing to do cod or even any other abk ips. If sony contract didn't say ms couldn't release forspoken on gamepass pc, ms would have done ti already.
I hope MS does not give any money to SE for this game, would be a waste.
Gamepass sometimes play its from the quantity angle. If SE want it on gamepass then I think MS will make it happen. Well, once the exclusivity period is up.
wow maybe shoddy marketing, restrictive PC requirements, and being a PS5 console exclusive might have hurt the sales. game honestly doesnt look as bad as people were making it out to be. doesnt look great but I think we can blame it on more than just 'and I'm talking to a freaking glove!' because hey Atomic Heart (regrettably) did fine
Essay Pro