tri-Ace, the development studio behind Valkyrie Profile and the Star Ocean series, is having a tough financial situation. Gamebiz, a Japanese news outlet focusing on the country's gaming industry, published an article based on tri-Ace's financial report for their previous fiscal year that ended in June 2022.

The article revealed that tri-Ace's sales during the whole year dropped by 42.9% from over 2 billion to 1.25 billion yen (~US $8.675 million). But while the company had an operating profit of 241 million yen (~$1.67M) in the June 2021 fiscal year, that turned into a huge loss of 625 million yen (~$4.34M). Likewise, their final profit went from 171 million yen to a deficit of 684 million yen (~$4.745M). The article went even further to declare that tri-Ace is in a state of insolvency.

For additional context to the financial situation, tri-Ace used to have Star Ocean: Anamnesis, a free-to-play mobile game with gacha microtransactions featuring characters from the Star Ocean series and many other guest crossover franchises. However, Square Enix shut down the title globally in November 2019 and in Japan on June 24, 2021. The latter especially dealt a big blow to tri-Ace's earnings, especially since it happened right around the end of the June 2021 fiscal year.

That also meant the studio had to develop Star Ocean: The Divine Force with virtually no income throughout the following year. The new sixth mainline Star Ocean title is slated for a simultaneous worldwide release on October 27 this year.