Square Enix Holds Strong

Square Enix recently announced its financial results for the nine months leading up to December 31. Despite subsidiary DigiCube going bankrupt, Square Enix is still set to meet its full-year forecasts for the financial year ending on March 31.

DigiCube's role was to distribute Square Enix products through convenience store chains in Japan, but instead went bankrupt, sapping 760 million yen ($7.2 million) from Square Enix. Square Enix still plans on meeting its original forecast of 8.1 billion yen ($77 million) in profits on sales of 86 billion yen ($815 million). The year end profit will be 51% lower than the profits of Square and Enix combined from the previous fiscal year. The company explains this by saying that the costs of the merger affected profits.

While console games are still Square Enix' bread and butter with 22.4 billion yen ($212 million) in revenue for the nine month time period, the new print division is proving to be successful with 6.5 billion yen ($61 million) earned so far. Most of these sales are related to Square Enix' full Metal Alchemist graphic novels.

Even though DigiCube has sapped some of Square Enix' strength, the publishing division has made up for this. With Full Metal Alchemist doing so well, expect to hear much more about the series in the future. There is already an anime TV show, and an action RPG title on the PS2. It could very well become one of Square Enix' biggest franchises along with Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest.