Co-development studio Tose has reported a nine-month loss of ¥367 million ($2.28 million) due to numerous projects being cancelled by its clients.
Established in 1979, Tose has a long history as a studio that specialises in working with other publishers and developers.
However, in its recent Q3 earnings report covering September 1, 2023 to May 31, 2024, the developer says its digital entertainment sector suffered a significant decline in profit, resulting in an overall loss for the period (as reported by Automaton).
Tose has gained a reputation as a ‘ghost developer’ over the decades, because of its general policy to avoid taking credit for the games it’s worked on.
As such, it’s practically impossible to create a full list of Tose-developed games, particularly those made in the ’80s and ’90s, because so many of them made no mention of the company or its staff at all.
In recent times, however, the studio’s work has been acknowledged more frequently – its website now lists some of the titles it worked on recently, inclufing the Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door remake, Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7 Reunion, Scarlet Nexus, WarioWare: Move It and Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince.
Because it mainly relies on work commissioned from other publishers, however, Tose is now suffering the knock-on effects of these publishers’ own financial troubles.
As such, it reports that multiple projects it had been working on have now been cancelled due to its clients’ policy changes, and it won’t be able to recoup profits from those games as a result of their cancellation.
It has lowered its sales forecast for the year by 12.5%, saying it expects things to remain uncertain for a while, but notes that it is working on improving its project management and plans to recover its momentum by steadily launching the games it still has in active development.
Although Tose doesn’t specify which clients have cancelled projects it was working on, the studio is a frequent collaborator with Square Enix, which confirmed in May that it had cancelled a number of unannounced game projects because they don’t fit with its new strategy.