Square Enix: Fiscal 2006 Profits Surge, No FFXIII Until 2008

Japanese-headquartered publisher and developer Square Enix has released its yearly financial earnings for the year ended March 31, 2007, during which the company realized a 67.5 percent rise in operating profit over the previous year, while simultaneously predicting a 19 percent decline during the 2007 fiscal year. The company noted that much of last year's sale's increase was driven by strong sales of Square Enix's titles in the retail market, with operating profit equaling ¥25.92 billion ($213 million) for the year, up from last year's ¥15.47 billion. Sales for the year saw a dramatic increase of 31 percent to a record ¥163.47 billion ($1.34 billion). In addition, during the fiscal year, Square Enix shipped 16.93 million video games globally, and it's packaged game business brought in ¥16.3 billion ($133.9 million). The firm's online game business also saw marked improvement over last year, posting elevated operating profit of ¥6.8 billion ($55.8 million), up from last year's ¥5.9 billion. Other divisions, including publishing, cellphone content and amusement facility businesses also improved over last year. Despite this, Square Enix posted a 32 percent decline in net profit to ¥11.62 billion ($95.5 million) because the company “wrote back only 3 billion yen in provisions, having written back 9 billion yen in provisions the year before,” according to a report by Japanese service AFX News. Looking ahead to the coming fiscal year, the company projects that net profits will climb a modest 3.3 percent to reach ¥12 billion ($98.7 million), while operating profits are expected to drop off considerably by 19 percent to ¥21 billion ($172.7 million). According to a report by consumer site IGN, Square Enix president Yoichi Wada said at a company briefing that the company's next expected blockbuster title Final Fantasy XIII would not be coming before March of 2008. "It will still take a bit more time," said the president. "At the very least, [a release] this fiscal year is definitely out of the question." Revenue is also expected to drop a slight 0.6 percent to ¥162.5 billion ($1.3 billion), due to an expected decline in global software sales to just 15 million copies worldwide, a full 2 million less than last year, “because it will not release any big titles,” according to the AFX reporter.