Financial Report From Star Ocean Developer tri-Ace Indicates Major Losses

(Image: Square Enix)

Studio tri-Ace, has been the long time producer of the Star Ocean franchise, a series of star-faring quests that blends futuristic technology and aspects of fantasy-style storytelling. While not quite the household name as Dragon Quest, Persona, or Final Fantasy, Star Ocean is a name that has been around since the Super Famicom and has seen eight mainline entries. They've also produced the first three games in the Valkyrie Proifle series, not having a hand in the development of the recently released latest game, Valkyrie Elysium.

In their June 2022 financial report that they shared with Gamebiz, a Japanese publication, it reveals that tri-Ace's sales have dropped a staggering 42%, losing ¥684,000,000 (the conversion rate roughly translating to almost $4.7 million USD), while pulling in ¥171,000,000 in profit ($1,174,530), leaving the company deep in the red for the fiscal year. Due to these numbers, this has led to many delays and cancellations, as they are unable to sustain funds for proper development.

It's been a tough go for tri-Ace in recent years. Most of their titles are published by known JRPG giant Square Enix, but development cycles and the lack of an adequate budget had a grave impact on products. The Star Ocean mobile game Anamnesis, a free-to-play gacha style RPG that featured characters from throughout the franchise, as well as guests from crossover series, was shut down by Square Enix internationally in 2019. The game stayed up a little longer in Japan, but was eventually decommissioned on June 24 2021, cutting off a viable source of revenue. As a result, profits became insolvent.

Their latest game, Star Ocean: The Divine Force, set to be released later this October, was barely developed on a budget, and aspects of it showed throughout its trailers, looking like it was made with the resources used for their previous game Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness, released for the PlayStation 4 in 2016 to a very middling reception. With Star Ocean's fanbase, who gears much older than modern mainstream franchises, The Divine Force has a very tall fiscal order to climb to ensure that tri-Ace makes a profit and helps solidfy their future. Being a multiplatform release certainly helps, but is an audience there?.

This situation does not look good for the developer.