Money money money money. Money.
November means third quarter results month, and nobody is happier to post their results than Media & Games Invest SE, owners of Gamigo among other companies. The good news is that net revenues for the first three quarters amounted to 172 million Euros, an 88% increase over the same period in 2020. The company also boasted its ability to overcome hurdles thrown into the market over the course of the last year including regulations in China and Apple’s identity tracking changes that angered many companies.
We also managed to utilize the opportunities of the markets: for example, we recognized very early that the disruptive changes caused by the crumbling of identifiers, such as Apple’s IDFA, offer a great opportunity to gain market share. We invested at an early stage in developing solutions for the post-identifier era which now leaves us in a great position to benefit from these changes. Other issues such as the games related regulations in China, or the global supply chain issues do not affect us as they neither impact our target markets nor our customer base.
The third quarter successes include the largest update for Fiesta Online, the successful launch of Trove on Switch, and more. Comments in the release also indicate that M&G plans on using this growth in the gaming sector to release more titles than ever before in the company’s history. And they can do it, what with the 983% increase in cashflow.
Also good news, I was wrong about Rift being on the chopping block. According to the investor report, Rift is getting a great update in Q1 of 2022. It does seem like convenient timing that Rift is getting mentioned now that M&G lost the publishing rights to ArcheAge.
For our successful game RIFT, which did not have any updates for a longer period, we will have
a first great update also in Q1’22. Our internal development teams are also already working on
projects for the next year, including e.g. the launch of Pirate101 in Europe.
It should also be noted that this will not change M&G’s strategy of not creating anything of their own, but instead simply buying already successful games. Hopefully this means more of an effort to maintain the titles rather than allowing Gamigo to milk them dry while the community slowly dies off.
It is important to realize that well over 2,000 games are launched each month. This in turn means that a games company should not focus on a single game, but instead should launch several games, of which only a few will (statistically) be successful. This leads to the fact that the investment volume increases significantly once again. For that reason, MGI has decided to not develop any games from scratch, but to acquire, continue and ideally improve already successful games or game IPs through M&A activities or by licensing games from developers to market them exclusively in Europe, North America and in most cases further territories.
The report acknowledges the failure of Atlas Rogues and notes there will be no further development on the title.
MMO Fallout 