Tag: Finance

Final Fantasy XV, Tomb Raider Drive Square Enix 9 Month Sales


Square Enix’s latest income report is out and the results are pretty positive. For the nine month fiscal period ending December 16, net sales amounted to 190 billion Yen, a 24.4% increase over the same period last year. Operating income meanwhile dropped nearly ten percent, although Square is expecting a positive outcome by the end of the fiscal year in March. Sales this period were driven by big blockbuster hits including Rise of the Tomb Raider and Final Fantasy XV.

Over on the mobile side, sales have been boosted thanks to strong performances by Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, Hoshi No Dragon Quest, and Dragon Quest Monsters Super Light. Square Enix’s MMO’s have seen a significant drop in income over last year due to the lack of an expansion pack release during the period. The upcoming launch of Stormblood will no doubt rectify that, however it does not come out until the next fiscal year.

You can check out the entire release at the link below.

(Source: Square Enix)

Nexon Releases Q3 Financial Highlights


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Nexon has released their third quarter financials for 2016 for the period ending September 30th, and the results are in. While third quarter revenues (44.3 billion yen) dropped 11% over last year, they exceeded estimations thanks to the strong performances of Maplestory and Dungeon & Fighter in Korea along with solid performance from Dungeon & Fighter in China. Operating income landed at 16.3 billion yen, also exceeding expectations thanks to higher revenue in China and lower than expected marketing costs.

Owen Mahoney, President of Nexon, had the following to say:

“We are pleased with our third quarter performance, which exceeded our outlook, driven by strong performance in our PC online game business in China and Korea. We also are seeing positive early performance from many of our new mobile titles, and look forward to exhibiting some of our most highly anticipated titles at the upcoming G-STAR*, including Dungeon & Fighter: Spirit, Project Dynasty Warriors (tentative), DARK AVENGER 3, LawBreakers and Moonlight Blade. This is an exciting time for Nexon as we begin to realize the benefits of our many recent strategic investments and partnerships and extensive internal development efforts. With a strong pipeline of titles and plans to continue to expand our presence into global game market, we have tremendous opportunity ahead.”

Fourth quarter revenues are expected to fall to somewhere between 39.3 and 42.2 billion yen, with the PC market making up around 29 billion and the mobile sector taking on the other 12 billion.

Funcom Q3 2016: Bad For Funcom, Good For The Secret World


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It doesn’t take a financial expert to know that things aren’t so hot when the top story is the sale of 15 million shares for $954 thousand. Funcom has released their third quarter revenues and the results are not so great. Revenue in Q3 amounted to $1.7 million, down from the nearly $2.2 million over the same period last year and compounded by the presence of said share sale. The good news is that the company no longer appears to be fully underwater, with equity at $97 thousand compared to negative $365 thousand over the same period last year.

As announced well over a year ago now, Funcom has changed its development strategy to one that focuses on small, low budget experimental titles alongside less frequent, larger games. This new plan has brought us The Park, spooky jump-scare game Hide & Shriek, as well as the upcoming Conan Legends, slated for release into early access in January. According to the quarterly report, Funcom are constantly looking out for new and emerging platforms like virtual reality and eSports, and augmented reality to create new products.

The Secret World players will be happy to know that a massive update is coming in the first half of 2017, something that Funcom has described as a “major upgrade to both retention and acquisition mechanics and content of the game.” Age of Conan will be receiving a new dungeon while Anarchy Online hopes to revitalize itself by launching on Steam sometime in the fourth quarter. The Park is effectively a money machine at this point, as low as its sales are, due to the fact that development has finished.

As for Conan Exiles, expect more marketing on that game to crop up in November with the additional news that the game is being developed for Xbox One, while Funcom hopes that the game will still be in the top 10 survival games being played a year after launch. Another Conan game is in the works, albeit very early in the concept phase, and not set to go into development until Conan Exiles exits early access.

(Source: Funcom)

NCSoft: All Key IPs Showed Stable Sales Last Quarter


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NCSoft has released their second quarter results and the news is good, even for those of you who play Wildstar. The Korean developer published a 28% boost in operating profit over last year with a 27% bump in pre-tax income and a 56% increase in net income. US and EU shares of NCSofts revenues plummeted, shedding a third of its value while Japan grew slightly as did Taiwan. According to NCSoft’s reports, while Blade & Soul grew heavily year over year thanks to its launch in the west, recent performance has seen a drop in royalties coming from the Chinese division.

On the game’s front, Lineage continues to sell more than virtually every other game in NCSoft’s library combined, with Aion and Guild Wars 2 taking a hit. Guild Wars 2, you can see, is suffering heavily from a content drought and subsequently saw its revenues fall flat over the past quarter. Based on the success of Heart of Thorns, it makes sense for Arenanet to adopt a strategy similar to World of Warcraft, living off of gem and microtransaction sales with small updates filling the gap between large, probably as-close-to-annual-as-they-can-get big expansion releases. The goal, according to NCSoft, is to decrease the amount of time between expansion releases to keep momentum up, however no further details have been discussed.

Aion, meanwhile, is performing fine. It may seem like a bad hit from the outside, but NCSoft has stated its expectations put the game within the 17 to 20 billion Won range, the game merely performed on the lower end of expectations. No one in the NCSoft offices is running around with their hair on fire over this news, however the game does have a major update coming that they expect will bring in increased revenue in the fourth quarter.

Wildstar, meanwhile, grew thanks to a launch on Steam introducing the free to play MMO to thousands of new eyes. Peak players fell off after the first month with a peak of 2,700 in July compared to 5,200 in June. Wildstar’s long term performance following its free to play revival and Steam launch will have to be observed, but it would be bad business for anyone at NCSoft to anticipate sales higher than 3 billion Won ($2.7 million USD) per quarter. Now that the team has a more realistic idea on where the game’s cash ceiling is, they can budget appropriately and NCSoft can figure out where they want to go with the IP.

Nexon’s upcoming list of releases includes Lineage Eternal as well as numerous mobile games including several based off of the Lineage franchise, increasing marketing costs and naturally boosting revenues. When asked about the release of Lineage Eternal, NCSoft’s response was…some information. According to the investor call, development is on schedule however there isn’t any concrete information on the closed beta. The team believes that the most effective timing would be around the holiday break period, so Korean gamers should mark their calendars for late November. The game is presently in the polishing stage.

Blade & Soul Mobile did not perform as well as anticipated.

Incidentally, NCSoft completely glossed over Wildstar in discussing each game’s performance in the investor call, lumping it in with the “other” category. Make of that what you will. Lineage Revolution is expected to have a November launch.

(Source: NCSoft, NCSoft investor call)

Nexon Q2 Quarterly Revenues Hit “Strong,”


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Nexon, developer of everything and publisher of everything else, has finally announced their second quarter results for the 2016 fiscal year, referencing their performance as “strong” despite lower than expected revenue.

Second quarter revenues reached 38 billion yen, down 11% over last year with net income amounting to 7.6 billion yen over the same period. Nexon blamed the majority of the loss on foreign exchange losses from money deposited overseas. Despite these losses, Nexon grew slightly in revenue over the first half of 2016 compared to the first half of 2015, however income has taken a huge hit due to impairment loss taken in the first quarter.

For the unaware, impairment loss refers to a product whose future earnings are lower than the cost of acquisition. In this case, Nexon purchased mobile developer Gloop a few years back and the developer isn’t making money.

“Our solid second quarter results reflect strong execution and good performance from our China business,” said Owen Mahoney, President and Chief Executive Officer of Nexon. “I am also pleased with the important strategic progress we made during the quarter, including our partnership with renowned Japanese developer Sansho Studios and our acquisition of wellgames, the Korean developer of SPECIAL SOLDIER, a high-quality first person shooter for mobile devices. Our best-in-class roster of partnerships remains a cornerstone of our strategy to deliver high-quality, tailored content to players around the world.”

Nexon has a number of games in its publishing pipeline for this year and next, including Riders of Icarus, Lawbreakers, Titanfall, Final Fantasy XI Mobile, Lego Mobile, and more.

(Source: Nexon)

Electronic Arts Posts Growth In Q4 2016


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Electronic Arts has posted its year end results for the fiscal year 2016, and everything is coming up profit. The publishing behemoth raked in $4.5 billion in revenue this past year, up from the $4.3 billion in the fiscal year ending in 2015. According to the company’s own projections, the next year should continue the trend with an estimated $4.9 billion.

As sales of digital goods climb, packaged games continued to lose market share. Digital revenue has taken over physical media by a growing margin, $2.5 billion compared to $2.0 billion, while EA’s profit margin has increased to an eye-popping 82.7%. PC gamers make up 26% of EA’s revenue while consoles account for 51% with mobile making up the rest. The console market had the strongest growth the past year, a 22% increase in revenue year over year.

Gamers hoping to see the end of downloadable content will have to wait another year, as customers spent $1.1 billion on “extra content,” a separate figure from the $570 million spent on mobile. Subscriptions and ad revenue made up $339 million while full game downloads accounted for about half a billion.

Fiscal year 2017 sees the launch of several big name titles, including Battlefield 1, Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, and Mass Effect Andromeda.

There was no mention of The Old Republic that we could find in any of the documents.

(Source: EA)

NCSoft Q3 2015 Drops Across The Board


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NCSoft has released their third quarter financial reports and the results are pretty much negative across the board. Sales were down 8% under the same time last year, while profits fell nearly forty percent and net income dropped sixty percent across the same period. NCSoft has pointed to a drop in in-game promotional items for Lineage 1 and Aion as the culprit behind a majority of the drop in sales in Korea, although every game in their library saw a loss in sales over the second quarter.

The only game that seemed to be doing better in the third quarter is Blade & Soul, whose continued success in China brought in increased royalties. Blade & Soul’s sales in China are not reflected in the game’s bar on the chart above. The news also does not take into account the shift of Wildstar to free to play and the launch of Guild Wars 2’s expansion Heart of Thorns. Wildstar’s earnings for the third quarter dropped to $1.5 million, while Lineage 1 still makes up just under half of the total game sales.

(Source: NCSoft)

Pathfinder Online Has Three Employees Left


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Pathfinder Online, currently in early enrollment, has three employees left. In an announcement on the official website yesterday, Acting CEO Lisa Stevens revealed that the majority of the Goblinworks team has been laid off due to a lack of funds. The company is currently seeking outside investments in order to ensure that the game can make it to open enrollment, however right now the three employees and servers are being supported by the community.

Due to the commitment that you have made to the game, your current subscriptions are able to keep the core team employed and the servers live.  We will continue to move the game forward with that team and keep the servers live as long as the continued financial support from the community is there.

The bad news accompanies even further bad news, that CEO Ryan Dancey has resigned his position due to personal reasons. Given Dancey voicing his disapproval of the community’s outreach efforts earlier this year, the news that Pathfinder is facing financial difficulty may not be all too surprising.

According to the news post, Pathfinder presently has enough funding to keep the servers up through September. Anything after that is wholly dependent on subscribers.

(Source: Pathfinder Online)

Star Vault’s Q2 Report: Sales Down, Profit Up


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Star Vault has released their financial results for the second quarter of 2015 and the news isn’t all bad.

Net sales for the quarter dropped ten thousand dollars over last quarter, from sixty eight thousand down to fifty eight thousand. While net profit is still in the red, it has been steadily climbing for the past five quarters straight. In the second quarter, net profit increased from a loss of sixty one thousand to a loss of forty one thousand.

 

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While profits increased and sales decreased, the report notes that the number of subscribers remains unchanged for the second quarter. In his note, CEO Henrik Nystrom expects Mortal Online to launch on Steam this month.

In order to be as ready as possible for the Steam launch, we built another starting position players – a queuing system. This and the start position is now completed. Moreover, we want to use Steam Achievements, which is different gaming sites where players can receive an award by doing different things in the game. In this way, players can show what they managed to achieve, which is also visible to other players on Steam. It’s a great way for others to see what you can do in Mortal Online, as well as the players can see that you play Mortal Online on Steam. We estimate that we will have these elements in place and to launch Mortal Online on Steam in August 2015. We have now compiled Steam Achievements, and the final polish on the level of detail.

(Source: Aktie Torget)

Star Vault Posts Higher Q1 Earnings


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Star Vault has released their first quarter sales for 2015, and the results are rather positive. While sales are down from where they were last year, net sales increased over the fourth quarter to $68 thousand. Likewise, Star Vault’s net loss fell substantially from over $100 thousand in Q4 to $61 thousand this quarter.

According to Star Vault’s report, the number of subscribers remained about the same over last quarter.

CEO Henrik Nystrom’s note:

We have recruited a further enhancement to our team, in the form of an experienced programmer with great interest in game development. This gives us the resources for the Steam release. Our new additions will work in several areas of development in Mortal Online – it’s great with fresh eyes coming from outside that can give feedback on what areas can be improved. We also have an additional encoder remotely in the US who now helps us with GUI and flash programming.

(Source: Aktie Torget)

Disclosure: Star Vault’s finances are published on the Aktie Torget stock exchange in Swedish, linked above, and translated using Google’s automatic tools. Figures shown above are based off of the SEK to USD conversion rates as of the day of their publishing. This is for informational purposes and is not meant to advise investment.)

(Editor’s note: Henrik Nystrom’s note only includes the last of three paragraphs. The first two were removed for brevity and poor translation, and cover outdated information on the Sarducca update)