Given the current state of the industry elsewhere—it's, uh, dire—I'm pleased to report that Square Enix, creator of the Final Fantasy series among other games, is doing pretty alright, all things considered. The news comes as a result of a financial results report, shared here by Gamebiz.jp (and translated by Automaton).
In the fiscal year ending 2027, ol' Square saw a major 88.6% operating profit increase year-on-year, mostly thanks to its videogame business—which itself saw its operating profit increase by 91.8% and its revenue by 51.8%. That's mainly due to Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth, which is finally meeting some expectations, one would surmise.
What's interesting to me is the footnote that Final Fantasy 14—a game whose popularity had been struggling with the somewhat-stagnant formula of Dawntrail, with an unofficial (but consistent and long-standing) census reporting a significant downturn back in June 2025— experienced an uptick in players in that same census earlier this year.
As a player of the game myself, I'm willing to call the shots on a few reasons why this is happening—first up, the actual content that Creative Studio 3's putting out has been markedly improved, with lessons learnt from the disaster of Forked Tower.
The developer has shifted from an outdated casual/hardcore divide to a more modern, scaling approach to difficulty—with the deep dungeon Pilgrim's Traverse having a scalable endgame fight, the expansion's one (and only) variant dungeon having a midcore "advanced" version, and the North Horn's version of the Forked Tower being more accessible, with an extreme version to boot.
Basically, Square's using more of the buffalo, which leads to far fewer perceived dips in patch cadence, even if the amount of stuff to do is still the same by volume. Then there's the Evercold announcements—revamped "evolved" jobs, a similarly midcore difficulty for its raid series, a complete rethinking of the tomestone system for a more seasonal structure.
Whether or not that all sounds appealing to you, change is vital for keeping an old girl like FF14 chugging along. Square Enix seems to think so, too—as the report mentions that, despite this uptick in players, FF14 actually only saw a slight profit increase because of the money the developer's actually spending on it to get Evercold ready for 2027.
Which makes me genuinely hopeful, given the sensation I've felt that FF14's development team has been on a shoestring budget for years—despite being Square's very own cash generator. It's understandable to siphon off a little bit of money from the consistent projects so you can experiment, don't get me wrong, but I couldn't help feeling a little miserly in recent years when "cost" was cited as a factor in certain missteps.
