Square Enix Share Price Has Dropped by Over 30% Since Final Fantasy XVI Released - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 October 2023 / 5,348 Views
The market value for Square Enix has dropped by nearly $2 billion since the release of the PlayStation 5 excusive Final Fantasy XVI, according to a report from Bloomberg.
The stock price for Square Enix has dropped by over 30 percent from a peak of $26.50 per share on June 21 down to $18.18 today.
"Flooding the market with unfinished, bad or untested games is a bad move," said Tokyo-based developer and gamer Michael Prefontaine speaking with Bloomberg. "The company has overstretched itself on too many titles without proper oversight."
Prefontaine listed Marvel’s Avengers, Forspoken and The DioField Chronicle as games that had a poor reception.
New Chief Executive Officer Takashi Kiryu has sated he will start to release few smaller titles and decrease outsourcing to focus on big-budget games that have higher potential for profit.
"We remain concerned with the company’s game development structure and game quality control, which could limit the longer term performance," said Macquarie Capital Securities Japan analyst Yijia Zhai.
Tokyo-based industry consultant Serkan Toto added, "Square Enix has problems with their games output. These titles get a 70% rating on Metacritic, are kind of OK and are just very forgettable."
MST Financial analyst David Gibson says Square Enix will be able to bank on its legacy franchises for at least the short term. However, anew mobile Final Fantasy VII game released last week and the report claims sales for the game fell short of investor expectations.
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.
More Articles
The article didn’t mention that their MMO section and Mobile section are down -22% and -18% respectively alongside previous flops like Babylons fall, marvels avengers, Forspoken, the Diofield chronicle, harvestella and many more.
They are just another developer now. Long gone are the 90s when they were THE premier RPG maker and even the 2000s when they weren't anymore but were still among the best and still sorta had the aura of that title thanks to the 90s. Hype for new FF these games I think are more about nostalgia of when FF games were among the best games being made, rather than actual excitement for the series as it is now.
well said! FF16 and FF7 remake are very high quality games, i am one of the 80s and 90s FF fans and loved 1-10, these new versionys of action are not for me
They are still my favorite RPG dev
The soul is gone.
That clickbait.... FF16 have about nothing to do with the drop in the shares.
Dropped 30% since their last financial report in August*
Final Fantasy 16's launch week was strong but not big enough to offset the huge loss from a year of flops console releases and cancelled mobile games. It's the one title that has actually sold well, but it's legs are a bit of cause for concern. They're going to need a strong promotional push this autumn to capitalise of PS5 sales, and hopefully future DLC and PC port revitalise awareness of the entry.
For sure though, it's been almost 2 decades since an offline Final Fantasy game was a massive hit with audiences (Final Fantasy X), so I think the franchise's reputation is just in need of steady repair...
I think 16 is great but for the next entry they really have to recapture distinct RPG gameplay and a world that can't be mistaken for anything but Final Fantasy
Seems much better written than the article from where VGC extracted their portion and the clickbait title.
All stocks have been pretty volatile the past 3 years, good news stocks jump 20% bad news they drop 20%. SE had a big uptick in the month before FF 16th release, if you look just 20 days earlier to June 1st its down closer to 15%. Not good, but in the world we've lived in recently all stocks and cyrpto are very price sensitive and have big swings.
Maybe if they dropped all that block chain bullshit they'd have a higher share value.
i purchased a 100 shares earlier today
The boss fights from Platinum were amazing. Rest of the game now that I've had a few months to sit on it. Kind of a letdown. It falls apart fast ans final act drags on forever.
Considering they they are still betting hard on NFT games, I would say it's deserved. Funny thing is that FF16 is pretty much their only title so far this gen that didn't sell like absolute garbage. Just below what was expected.
If it launched on Xbox and PC it would have missed a lot of funds and help during dev time. For probably less than one million sales. On Switch could have sold more than on PlayStation though. But I can't see this game running on Switch without building a port from scratch.
i cant see the series S running it very well its more than playable on the PS5 but its far from perfect
Not even that. FF16 sold within the range it was expected (even SE said they were satisfied) what it didn't is reach the highest end of their forecast (when if you make a good forecast the number should be very close to the middle of the prediction).
I feel so bad for them cuz if they just looked at capcom n seen that people love the traditional old school games that’s made them what they are instead they gave us this version of final fantasy n let’s be honest it’s not really a final fantasy game. I hope they can turn it around n just got back to what made final fantasy and not some action packed DMC
yes TURN BASED FINAL FANTASY!
It comes to no surprising seeing the list/lack of games they've been releasing. Just reading their TGS line-up looks bland.
They need to make a new Parasite Eve game and get on the horror game band-wagon while its still hot. Even Konami's doing it.
Hopefully this sends a message to the entire industry that timed exclusives is dangerous and outright wrong. Timed should be removed from the industry and all 3rd party games should simply release on everything unless its 2nd and 1st party.
These “news” outlets are discrediting themselves. Not a single mention of the gigantic failure of the strategy of exclusivity for PS5 which has been a disaster for Square Enix.
Square themselves have recently made moves indicating that exclusives will be less prominent, but the news makes no mention of this.
Yeah because Star Oceans and the non mainline FF titles which where multiplatform did them any wonders. Or Avengers or Guardians of the Galaxy for that matter. Saleswise they are all flops.
Considering how many flops Square makes its a wonder they don't have financial trouble. Nintendo exclusives seems to be the only game that Square can make consistently profitable. Turning to Xbox and PC won't help Square they need to turn to Nintendo.
