Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Developer Monolith Soft’s Profits Down 60% From Last Year
The developer behind last year’s hit exclusive Switch JRPG, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, has recently shared its financial details for the most recent fiscal year. Monolith Soft saw a major drop in profits for the JRPG developer compared to the previous fiscal year. This most recent fiscal period ended in March 31st, 2018 so the financial results it shared are from April 2017 through March 2018.
For that period of time, the studio experienced a major decrease in total profits. The developer’s annual profits for the most recent fiscal year were down a total of 60 percent from the previous fiscal year. That is a huge percentage drop for a studio that actually launched a significant game during that time frame. Does that mean that Xenoblade Chronicles 2 didn’t do so well after all? Let’s dig into the actual numbers and find out what happened.
The actual profits that Japanese studio Monolith Soft made in the most recent fiscal year was around 138 million yen, which equals to just over 1.2 million US dollars. In comparison, the year prior to that, the Xenoblade Chronicles 2 developer had made 346 million yen in total profits for that fiscal year. That may seem really odd given that no new games were released during the latter, but that did happen during the former.
Thankfully, that doesn’t mean that Xenoblade Chronicles 2 sold poorly. In fact, it did better than any previous Xeno game ever with 1.31 million units sold to date. That doesn’t just include the original Xenoblade and Xenoblade Chronicles X, but also the Xenosaga and Xenogears games from the PS2 and PlayStation generations respectively.
So what exactly happened to cause the decrease in profits? Well, it could be the marketing and development costs around Xenoblade Chronicles 2 as it neared launch. Another major component could be the fact that Monolith Soft just recently opened a new studio who is hiring rapidly for developers with action game experience.
If you’ve been meaning to check out the developer’s latest JRPG, check out this great sale on the game. Also, don’t forget to check out all of the new details on how Monolith Soft’s parent company, Nintendo, could be returning to a live E3 press conference in the future.