Nihon Falcom will release a new Trails entry by September 2024
Nihon Falcom published their financial report for the fiscal year that ended in September 2023. The report also revealed the company's initial plans for the next fiscal year which goes until September 2024. Nihon Falcom confirmed that they will release a new entry in The Legend of Heroes: Trails series by the end of the new fiscal year.
The slide mostly contained key arts of games that the company released in the September 2023 fiscal year, as well as known ports slated for release in the next fiscal year until September 2024. The most interesting tidbits came from the September 2024 fiscal year outlook on Page 19. We have translated the notes as follows:
- Release the newest title in the Trails series, our company's representative series that has surpassed 7 million units sold
- Release 2 games for Nintendo Switch worked on by our own company domestically in Japan, including Trails Through Daybreak for Nintendo Switch
- Proceeding on multi-platform expansions to consoles, PCs, and smartphones worldwide, including overseas regions
- Proceeding on producing new titles as new challenges including the Trails and Ys series, while proactively utilizing owned IP contents
- We are currently proceeding on expanding the amount of released titles and creating new IP content and games, so development costs are incurred in advance
- As a characteristic of the shift in achievements, sales amount will be focused on the months where new products are released, so we forecast the latter half to have a higher importance
The latter two points refer to Nihon Falcom's financial earnings, which are experiencing a slight downward trend. The company saw slight decreases in both sales and profit in the September 2023 fiscal year compared to the previous one. They attributed this to the delay of several Switch releases, the addition of costs in research, development, promotion, and advertisement, and the currency rate difference in each year. For the next fiscal year in September 2024, the company is also forecasting a further slight decrease in profits while striving to stabilize the sales amount.
The latest entry in the Trails series to date is Kuro no Kiseki II: Crimson Sin, which Falcom released for PlayStation 5 and 4 in September 2022 in Japan. The West still has a game behind to catch up with Japan, as the English localization of the first sub-series entry - now known as Trails Through Daybreak - is slated for release in Summer 2024 on the PS5, PS4, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam.