Damn, son. First, John Riccitiello steps down from EA due to sucking at life (and admitting he was responsible for EA’s poor financial performance) and now Yoichi Wada, president of Square Enix, has confirmed he’s set to resign due to “extraordinary” financial losses.
How “extraordinary”, you ask? Well, let’s put it this way: Square Enix had originally expected to make a 3.5 billion yen profit, but has now announced a 13 billion yen loss.
Ouchkabibble.
“In view of the rapidly changing environment of the game businesses, the company has decided to implement major reforms and restructuring in its development policy, organizational structure, some business models, and others. The company expects that the representative directors will change. Such change is subject to a resolution by its 33rd annual general meeting of shareholders to be held in late June, 2013, and a resolution by its board of directors meeting to be held after the said meeting of shareholders.” Square Enix said.
Square Enix also blames “low sales of major console game titles in North American and European markets” and “sluggish performance of its arcade machine business.”
For shits, check out the below graph I found on ComputerAndVideoGames.com regarding software sales of Squeenix’s latest and greatest:
I’ll say it again — damn, son.
What steps do you think Square Enix needs to take in order to turn themselves around? Besides, you know, working on and semi-marketing a game for twenty years without releasing it. (COUGH VERSUS XIII COUGH HAAAAACK.)
To me, this was sorta inevitable, with their Main Champion Final Fantasy, now being resorted to spin-offs, remakes, and iphone games, They couldn’t find anything else to help pick up the slack, especially since they’ve launched some pretty impressive games in the past. It’s sad to see them so low.
SE over the last couple years games just haven’t been that much fun.
What I want to know is where all the money is going that they’re taking these losses. Do programmers and artists really cost that much money? The games industry makes significantly more money than the movies, and seems to do it with lower costs.
Good.