2024 has been a challenging year for the video game industry and it seems Japanese developer Tose (a team that’s worked on countless Nintendo projects since the Famicom era and also helped out Square Enix over the years) has experienced some financial losses due to multiple projects being cancelled.
The co-development studio, which has been involved with the Switch versions of Paper Mario and Crisis Core, reported a nine-month loss of Â¥367 million (about $2.28 million) in its Q3 earnings report (which ran from 1st September 2023 until 31st May 2024) due to clients cancelling projects because of “policy changes” and “other factors”.
Tose is not only “one of Japan’s biggest outsourcing game companies” but it’s also been labelled a “ghost developer” – as it’s not always credited on projects. However, this has changed over the years with its official website at least listing a selection of the projects it’s helped out with (dating back to the Game Boy generation).
Although it’s lost certain projects and won’t be able to get a return, the aim is to now recover with a steady launch of games that are still in active development. This news follows Square Enix cancelling multiple unannounced projects in May 2024. Tose has also developed The Legendary Starfy series and helped out with other games like Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince, WarioWare: Move It!, Splatoon 2 and Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster.
