”Forspoken Reviews Have Been Challenging, Its Sales Have Been Lackluster”

Square Enix’s high-budget action RPG, Forspoken, developed by the now-defunct Luminous Productions, has predictably flopped due to a myriad of reasons, and the company had some explaining to do in the latest financial results briefing session covering the first three quarters of the fiscal year ending March 31, 2023.

Quotes about Forspoken from the latest financial results briefing:

Reviews of “Forspoken,” which we released on January 24, 2023, have been challenging. However, the game has also received positive feedback on its action features, including its parkour and combat capabilities, so it has yielded results that will lead to improvement of our development capabilities of other games in the future. That said, its sales have been lackluster, and while the performance of new titles with February and March release dates will be the ultimate determinant, we see considerable downside risk to our FY2023/3 earnings.

The struggling action RPG title was also brought up in a Q&A session with the the investors:

Q: How much impact could “Forspoken,” which you launched in January, have on your 4Q FY2023/3 results?

A: I will refrain from answering that question in quantitative terms, partly because the title has just been released, and partly because the answer will hinge on how sales will trend once we have rolled out some forthcoming promotional initiatives.

Forspoken is immediately available for the PlayStation 5 and PC.