This is of course the president talking to investor analysts, not to customers (gamers). They probably:

• over promised investors on the potential return,
• also maybe they spent too much on AAA development.

It could have sold 10 mil copies, but if the investors are not getting the return they were promised, or they spent too much time in development, it will still fall short of expectation. And this is factoring that Sony probably have paid for exclusivity and shouldered the co-marketing expenses.

Again, these are investor talk, not really aimed at us who are just playing the games. Konami briefly abandoned game developments, because pachinko was more profitable, and I’m pretty sure the investors were happy about it, until covid hit, and pachinko parlors were empty.

People should start seeing these comments from the business POV (which sucks, I know). Investors couldn’t care if the game is garbage, but if it could promised them astronomical returns, then they’d be totally okay with it.

And of course, looking at their top 10 shareholders, 7 out of 10 are financial institutions (banks & securities holdings), while 3 others are related to Fukushima’s family (Yasuhiro Fukushima was the founder of Enix, I assume Michiko is his wife, because she was in the filing when Enix absorbed Square, and Fukushima Holdings is an asset management owned by Yasuhiro)

Hmmm, what do all those banks want?

Edit: I also wanna point out that investor’s expectation in Japan or Asia is bit different, considering that they could have spent considerably smaller amount of money in developing mobile gacha games which are popular there, while reaping 10x profits from it. Thus the skewed expectations, and why the investor relations / sales expectations always sound baffling, and why ATLUS nickel and diming every single stuff.