Square Enix has revealed during a financial results briefing in early February that sales of Forspoken have underwhelmed for the publisher at launch, although the middling reviews haven’t helped matters.
While an English transcript of the briefing has only just come to light, Yosuke Matsuda, the President of Square Enix, made it clear that Forspoken hasn’t gotten off to a great start. Matsuda-san described the game’s performance so far as being “lacklustre” amidst “challenging” reviews.
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 lacklustre, 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.
In related news, Luminous Productions will be merging with Square Enix in May 2023, although the future of Forspoken as a possible franchise remains up in the air at this point.
Forspoken was released on January 24, 2023 for PS5 and PC. You can read our full review of the game here.
[Source – VGC]