Square Enix’s hotly anticipated Final Fantasy XV may not see the light of day until after the publisher’s next financial year concludes on March 31, 2015.
As reported earlier today on PSU.com, the Japanese games company returned to profitability for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2014, following a decidedly rough period that ultimately lead to Yoichi Wada, the then-CEO of Square Enix, announcing his resignation.
However, its game sales forecast for the next financial year has dropped by five million units. Why is this significant? Well, the fact the publisher now expects to move 12 million units of software by March 31, 2015 suggests that Final Fantasy XV is not part of the equation.
Given the immense pulling power of the Final Fantasy brand, one would expect Square Enix’s sales outlook for the year ahead to be somewhat higher. As RPGSite notes, 2010’s sales forecast hit 13 million for Japan alone, which was the year that Final Fantasy XIII hit shelves. The sales forecast for the U.S. and Europe hit six and seven million, respectively.
However, for this year, the company only expects to hit 3.4 million software sales in Japan, 3.8 in North America and 4.8 million in PAL countries. As such, it is extremely unlikely that Final Fantasy XV will be released in 2014, or even before next March; the figures would certainly be higher if it were to see the light of day during that period.
Final Fantasy XV has had an arduous development cycle to say the least. The project was originally announced at E3 2006 until the title Final Fantasy Versus XIII, and was then targeted for PS3 only. However, after drip-feeding us details over the next couple of years, Square Enix re-revealed the game as FFXV at Sony’s E3 press conference last year.
A release date has of course yet to be officially announced, but we’ll keep you posted.