“I never should have agreed to these KPIs.”
Not long after EA head honcho John Riccitiello fell on his sword, a second high profile industry figure has given up the fight. Square Enix president Yoichi Wada has stepped aside following the release of revised forecasts suggesting that the publisher is heading towards an “extraordinary” annual loss of AU $132m. Fellow director Yosuke Matsuda will take on the role while the Japanese publisher searches for a permanent replacement.
Square Enix has partially attributed the poor result to “weak” sales of Sleeping Dogs, Hitman: Absolution and Tomb Raider. Considering that these high quality titles shifted 1.8m, 3.6m and 3.4m copies respectively, this is an extraordinary claim, particularly in the case of Tomb Raider, which has been in stores for less than a month. In previous console generations, such figures would have seen each game hailed as a runaway bestseller. It should also be noted that these totals exclude digital sales and sales from outside Europe and North America.
