Square Enix held its annual investors conference in Tokyo today. For all those more interested in games than financials, Square Enix president Youichi Wada was kind enough to not only present financial figures, but also talk about upcoming releases. For the past fiscal year that ended on March 31st, Square Enix is reporting a net profit of 11.7 billion yen ($96.32 million USD) on sales of 163.5 billion yen ($1.35 billion USD). While net profit was down 32% compared to the previous fiscal year, sales had increased by 32%.

According to Wada, this past fiscal year marked the first time in company history, that Square Enix's sales in Japan were lower than abroad. Out of 16.93 million copies, only 7.21 million were sold in Japan. Wada attributed this shift to Square Enix successfully distributing its games by itself rather than through other third party publishers in Europe.

As far as the company's online division is concerned, Wada admitted that its profit was almost exclusively generated by Final Fantasy XI. This won't change this year, but Square Enix apparently is currently working on two or three major online games which are scheduled for release in 2008 or 2009.

Development of Dragon Quest IX for Nintendo DS was going ahead extremely smoothly, according to the Square Enix president. Meanwhile he also had some sad news for those who had hoped to play Final Fantasy XIII during the holiday season. The company's flagship PlayStation 3 title will definitely not hit retail store shelves during the current fiscal year, that is before March 31st 2008.

• GameWatch