Mobile revenue down 44% year over year.
Continue reading “Nexon Beats Expectations Despite Mobile Drop”
Tag: Quarter
Netmarble Posts $1.8 Billion Sales In 2019 Fiscal Year
Why make millions when we can make…billions?
Continue reading “Netmarble Posts $1.8 Billion Sales In 2019 Fiscal Year”
Com2Us Posts $106.7 Million In Sales
Com2Us this week posted its third quarter revenue for 2018 and the results are positive.
Third quarter sales amounted to $106.7 million USD with $33.8 million in profits, beating out the previous record of $26.5 million. Overseas sales accounted for 83% of revenue with North America and Europe accounting for 50% of those sales.
For the future, Com2US is looking to expand its popular Summoners War title from the mobile gaming scene and into cartoons, comics, and other merchandise. They have also opened up pre-registration for Skylanders Ring of Heroes on mobile devices.
(Source; Com2Us press release)
NCSoft Reports Growth For Fourth Quarter 2017
NCSoft today released their fourth quarter results for 2017 and the company has posted increased earnings across the board over last year. Sales, profits, and income grew over 80% over the same period in 2016 fueled primarily by the company’s massive success in the mobile market and the launch of the latest expansion for Guild Wars 2. Mobile sales dropped 41% over the last quarter as the launch fervor of Lineage M dies down, while Guild Wars 2 gained a 73% growth over the same period.
For the year of 2017, mobile sales accounted for 57% of total earnings while Lineage 1 dropped 59% with much of that revenue being players transferring to Lineage M. Revenues from Korea and royalties grew massively while the market share from US/Europe, Japan, and Taiwan decreased slightly. Fourth quarter earnings from the US/Europe did grow despite the overall yearly drop due to sales of Guild Wars 2 and its expansion.
(Source: NCSoft)
Funcom Boasts Best Half Ever As Conan Exiles Propels Profits
Funcom’s second quarterly revenue report is out, and the results are as expected, positive. The combined success of Conan Exiles and Secret World Legends has propelled the Oslo developer to its best half in the history of the company, nearly halving their debt and increasing equity by 40%. Sales of Secret World Legends have exceeded company expectations, although the sales had little effect on this quarter’s revenue due to its late release and will not be seen until the next release. Overall revenue increased 79% over last year.
To complement its success, Funcom has rebranded as Funcom 2.0, with a brand new logo of a screaming face on a burning flag, to convey the developer’s passion, ambition, and history.
Two new games are currently in production at Funcom, with the Oslo studio working on a new Conan game and the Durham studio in the concept stage on a game that will be dependent on the success of Secret World Legends. In addition, Funcom has announced that it is partnering with Bearded Dragons to produce a new game for 2018. Funcom had previously revealed that Johnny Depp will be involved in a TV series based off of The Secret World.
(Source: Funcom)
Funcom Reports Most Profitable First Quarter In History
We’d like to picture that Funcom is having a huge money fight in their offices, with the announcement that the company has posted the highest profit in their history. Thanks to the runaway success of Conan Exiles, Funcom this quarter boasted a profit of $6.1 million USD, with total revenue nearing $11 million.
For upcoming Funcom games, players will have to wait until June 26 to get their hands on Secret World Legends, the free to play reboot of The Secret World, and July 31 in order to get said game on Steam. In their investor report, Funcom blames this on a competitive market in May/June with expansions for Final Fantasy XIV and The Elder Scrolls Online hitting Steam, as well as the Steam launch of Black Desert Online. Meanwhile, Dreamfall Chapters was released on May 5. Both Funcom Oslo and Funcom North Carolina are working on upcoming titles, one of which is based on the Conan IP.
(Source: Funcom)
Nexon Releases Q3 Financial Highlights
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.
NCSoft: All Key IPs Showed Stable Sales Last Quarter
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)
Star Vault’s Q2 Report: Sales Down, Profit Up
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.
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)
World of Warcraft Drops To 5.6 Million Subscribers
Activision Blizzard has officially posted their second quarter results for 2015, and the results are in the title of this article. While revenues grew year over year, to $1.04 billion from $970 million in the second quarter 2014, World of Warcraft once again saw a drop in subscriber figures: Down to 5.6 million from the 7.1 million reported last quarter and 10 million the quarter before. Once again Blizzard pointed to the “eastern market” for the brunt of the losses, noting that subscribers stabilized with the launch of Fury of Hellfire.
“Our strategic focus on expanding our franchise portfolio with captivating and original new intellectual property, innovating on new platforms, and expanding into new geographies is reflected in our results. We outperformed our Q2 targets and last year’s results on revenues, digital growth, and earnings per share. These strong results and the excitement for our future games have driven us to raise our full-year outlook.”
-Bobby Kotick, CEO
The report also market the “most active” second quarter in company history in regards to engagement and digital monetization.
Activision’s big earner Destiny launches its next expansion, Taken King, which will remove the leveling system that uses light and replace it with standard experience. Bungie also announced through Game Informer that Peter Dinklage will no longer be voicing Ghost, with Nolan North re-recording all of his previous dialogue.
(Source: Activision report)
MMO Fallout 