Rising digital sales offsets physical decline at Square Enix

Profits and sales are up across the board at Square Enix, according to the Final Fantasy developer's financials for the three months ended June 30, 2017. 

The Japanese outfit saw net sales increase by 11.3 percent to 57 billion yen ($514.4 million), while profits rose by 56.8 percent to 8.36 billion yen ($75.4 million) during the same period. 

Looking at the company's Digital Entertainment division, which houses its video game operations, net sales increased by 17.7 percent to 44.1 billion yen ($397.9 million). Operating income also received a shot in the arm, rising by 44.9 percent to 13.7 billion yen ($123.6 million). 

That's despite a decline in physical game sales, with Square revealing revenue from packaged first and third party software has been on the wane. 

As it stands, that downward shift has been offset by "strong" download sales of catalog titles like Nier: Automata. 

On the smart device and PC browser front, Square claims established titles like Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, Hoshi No Dragon Quest, and Kingdom Hearts Union X are still performing well. 

Moving forward, Square expects net sales and profits to hit 240 billion~260 billion yen ($2.16 billion~$2.34 billion) and 16.5 billion~19.5 billion yen ($148.9 million~$176 million) by the end of this fiscal year.