Square Enix six-month earnings falter

Square Enix provided investors and analysts fair warning of its rocky April-September quarter earlier this week, when it revised its revenue projections for the period downward by 10 percent. True enough, the Japanese publisher has now released its official financial report for the sixth-month period, and it reflects a steep decline from the same period a year ago.

For the first six months of its in-progress fiscal year, Square Enix reported sales of ¥68.05 billion ($836 million), down 25 percent from the same period a year ago and in line with its revised forecast. The publisher's profit revision also accurately pegged its actual net income for the fiscal half-year, coming in at ¥1.72 billion ($21 million), a 36 percent year-over-year decrease.

As Square Enix said earlier this week, the cause for the earnings declines was anemic receptions of some of its new releases. Square Enix released a handful of high-profile titles during the period. Included among these were Front Mission Evolved, as well as Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days, and Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light.

The publisher today noted that two of its new releases passed the million-unit milestone: Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2, which released in Japan in April, and August's Kane & Lynch 2. All said, the home gaming segment pulled in revenues of ¥35.18 billion ($432 million), with operating income tallying ¥6.48 billion ($79.7 million).

The publisher expressed disappointment over its arcade business in Japan, which the publisher said "remained at unsatisfactory levels under the current difficult market conditions." Net sales for its amusement business totaled ¥23.54 billion ($289 million) for the April-September period, as operating income came in at ¥1.98 billion ($24.3 million).