Tag: Revenue

Square Enix Boosts Profit Forecast


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The relaunch of Final Fantasy XIV has brought nothing but good tidings to Square Enix since it hit shelves last year. According to an article on Gamasutra, Square Enix has increased its forecasted earnings in both revenue and overall profits, with the latter up 50% over previously anticipated returns. Originally, Square Enix had anticipated a $20 million loss for the fiscal year. Thanks to the unexpected performance of Final Fantasy XIV and arcade sales, the company is now projecting a profit of $64.9 million.

(Source: Gamasutra)

Funcom's 2013 Income Drops


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Funcom has released their Q4 2013 finances and the results are a mixed bag, mostly leaning towards the negative. Revenues in the fourth quarter dipped below last quarter, $4.2 million compared to $5.3 million and far below the same period last year. Losses in revenue pointed toward weak sales due to increased competition in 2013. Funcom has continued to invest in LEGO Minifigures Online as well as the Dreamworld platform so that the former is compatible across multiple systems, including mobile devices.

The new strategy for 2014 is to increase communication with press and analysts on where the developer is headed in the future. As announced in 2012, the new strategy is to build mid-core focused games with smaller budgets and shorter development times using smaller teams. Also among the list of goals is to build games around known brands, hence the Lego Minifigures title. With the introduction of the Dreamworld technology, Funcom’s future games will be compatible with iOS and Android platforms.

Funcom’s large scale MMOs saw a decrease in activity level due to increased competition in the last quarter, which the developer has responded to with increased marketing campaigns that have resulted in higher activity and revenue in the early first quarter. Numbers and revenue in Age of Conan and Anarchy Online remained mostly stable, and all games are currently considered cash flow positive. The Lego Minifigures game is on track for an open beta this summer, with a tablet version available sometime this year. Lego Minifigures will be free to play with microtransactions, membership benefits, or some mixture of both.

As many of our readers know, Funcom is currently being investigated by Økokrim, Norway’s economic crimes unit, on suspicion of insider trading and negligence in information given to the market leading up to the launch of The Secret World. So far no employees have been charged and Funcom has not been informed as to how long the process will take.

(Source: Funcom Earnings Release)

Lineage's 1.8 Billion Dollar, uh, Lineage


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Lineage is NCSoft’s most successful title to date, launching in 1998 and still going strong fifteen years later in Korea and not in North America or Europe where the game was decidedly less popular. Still, Lineage has quite a following in Korea, Japan, China, and several other territories. With the game’s fifteen year anniversary a couple months behind it, NCSoft has revealed that Lineage has raked in $1.8 billion in sales. On second thought, that doesn’t sound impressive enough. Think of it as two trillion won, or ?2,000,000,000,000.

If South Korea celebrated Thanksgiving, I imagine the folks at NCSoft would be stuffing their turkey with money today.

(Source: Destructoid)

The Big Perfect World Finance Chart


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Perfect World Entertainment becomes the latest company to enter MMO Fallout’s portfolio of charts and graphs. As you can see from the chart above, the Chinese developer/publisher has come a long way just since the earliest financial statements available on their website (Q3 2007). This quarter, Perfect World made out with $136.2 million in total revenue and $104.4 million in gross profit. Robert Xiao, CEO of Perfect World, was happy to report that the company’s bottom line has been boosted by 50%, thanks to strong reception of numerous expansion packs and content updates, as well as the release of several new Chinese games.

In the pipeline, Perfect World is gearing up for releasing DOTA2 in China, as well as the Chinese localization for Neverwinter. Perfect World will also acquire 100% equity in two of China’s leading gaming portals, Wuhu Huitian and Daqu. Revenues for Q4 2013 are expected to increase by 2-7% over this quarter.

(Source: Perfect World)

Funcom's Third Quarter Finances


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Funcom has released their third quarter results for 2013, and as usual the results are a mix of the good and the bad. Revenues in the third quarter amounted to $5.3 million, a decrease over the same time last year when The Secret World initially launched. A significant operating cost decrease combined with tax credits allowed for a $2.2 million cash flow compared to a slight loss in the previous quarter.

The main source of revenue for this past quarter came from The Secret World and Age of Conan, consistent with last quarter but lower than last year. Revenue in all games went down due to high profile game releases including Grand Theft Auto V. Work continues on the engine upgrade for Anarchy Online, and further initiatives are being pursued across all titles despite a relatively stable quarter for The Secret World and Age of Conan.

Funcom’s upcoming title, Lego Minifigures, is maintaining its development schedule, and was met with a positive response at its public showing in Cologne, Germany. The company expects lower revenue in the next quarter.

NCSoft Operating Profit Down 51% Over Last Quarter


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NCSoft has released their financial statements for the third quarter of 2013 and the results are not so great. While sales dropped only 12% over last quarter, operating profit dipped 51% over the same period and pre-tax income similarly dropped 47%. Net income stands at a 23% drop over the previous quarter. In the report, NCSoft links the loss of profit due to the “lion’s share of Lineage in-game item sales in 3Q being carried over to 4Q.”

On the game side, Lineage saw a nearly 27% drop in sales over the last quarter, while Blade & Soul enjoyed 40% rise in sales attributed to the “Baek-chung” content pack recently released for the game. Sales for Lineage 2, Aion, and Guild Wars 2 all dropped over the previous quarter.

According to NCSoft, while labor costs remained flat, royalty and marketing expenses increased due to a license contract with the Baseball Players Association and the Wildstar marketing campaigns respectively. Other expenses included the relocation of the NCSoft headquarters, restoration of the Seoul offices, and office supplies.

(Source: NCSoft Corporate)

NCSoft Q1 2013 Finances


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(I apologize for the outdated screenshot. I will update with a graph once I’m in front of a real computer.)

NCSoft has released their first quarterly report for 2013, and I’m sure we are all wondering how Guild Wars 2 will perform following the initial rush, so let’s dive in. Sales remained strong in 2013 thanks to Guild Wars 2, Aion, and Lineage. Profit is understandably down since last quarter’s launch of Guild Wars 2, however NCSoft’s year over year figures are amazing: 31% higher sales, 348% increased profits, 256% pre-tax income, and 322% net income over Q1 2012.

Lineage 1 continues to be NCSoft’s big seller, consisting of 38% of the total game sales in Q1, with Guild Wars 2 at 21% and Aion at 16%. Aion and Lineage saw an increase in sales quarter over quarter while Lineage II, Guild Wars, and Blade & Soul saw a mild to heavy loss. NCSoft as a parent company has thankfully recovered from being in the red last quarter for pre-tax income and net income.

Korea remains NCSoft’s largest market at 64%, with North America and Europe dropping by about half to 13% and 8% respectively, Japan’s 7% percentage share remained the same even though sales dropped. Sales in Taiwan increased slightly, remaining at 1%. Royalties dropped about one third in total, remaining at the 6% percentage value from the last quarter.

As usual, Guild Wars is bundled in with the “other” and is not represented by its own category. For legal reasons, I must remind you that these results are un-audited and may be subject to change during the auditing process.

Rift: $100 Million In Revenue


For every decent article I write on this website, I’m inundated with people asking me to talk about “the great fall of Rift,” and how the game is apparently sliding down a population exodus to match or beat that of Warhammer Online all those years back. Still, when I have to make announcements like Rift placing more servers on Trial status and making sure everyone knows it is not the same as a merger, and assuring people that Rift’s consistent promotions to bring the client price down cheaper than a McDonald’s value meal is actually an aggressive marketing strategy by Trion rather than the desperate grab for players that some make it out to be, my job becomes rather difficult.

So my greatest asset is figures. Hard figures released by the developer, not half baked xfire statistics or polls on a thread where 80% of the people voting “I cancelled and hate this game” have never even purchased the game. According to Reuters, Trion has pulled in over $100 million in Rift during 2011, according to Trion CEO Lars Butler. And with impending releases in Asia, this figure only stands to increase over 2012. Trion has also received an injection of $85 million (this is not figured into the revenue) by investors.

$100 million in revenue feels more realistic when you account that at least $50 million of that came through initial box sales when Trion reported one million sales, before the major price reductions began. Figuring out the actual number of boxes sold (digital and retail combined) would be next to impossible with all the promotions Trion has done over the past six or seven months.

(Source: Games Industry)

Jagex: Profits And Investors, Not Doing A Crap Job


RuneScape’s roots go back ten years, to 2001 where the game was a simple at home project by Andrew Gower. With the Gowers now mostly absent (they resigned from the Board of Directors in December 2010), the torch has been passed to Mark Gerhard to keep the developer moving in its upward trend. Granted, Jagex has multiple MMOs in production (Stellar Dawn and Transformers Online, to name just the two slated for release this year), so the rise in revenue but dip in profits reported for 2010-2011 was to be expected at some extent.

But fret not, investors and gamers. To the former, Jagex isn’t some cheap floozy willing to take just anyone’s money. In an interview with Games Industry, Mark Gerhard wants to set the record straight that Jagex dates very, very selectively.

Nothing has changed as far as the company goes. It’s the same management team, we’ve obviously been at the helm for quite some time and to the best of our knowledge and expectation it will continue to be so. Sure we therefore have some American shareholders, but the management and the culture and the ethos and everything else is the same people, in the same hands, and staunchly British.

Gerhard attributes the dip in profits to Jagex investing more in the company instead of paying dividends, a move which apparently began around the time Insight Ventures attained 55% ownership in Jagex (end of 2010). He also paints a picture that, regardless of the shift in majority ownership, nothing has changed at Jagex since Insight Ventures took the majority vote.

Jagex has quite an interesting year ahead of it, what with continued investment in RuneScape, the recent launch of their HTML-based game 8Realms, and the upcoming launches of Transformers Online and Stellar Dawn.

(Source: Gamesindustry.biz) You’ll need to be registered to view the article.

Champions Online: 1,000% More Money


Atari, and by extension Cryptic

By now this type of news shouldn’t be too surprising, and I doubt anyone expected to see a headline: “Cryptic announces major loss in revenue after move to free to play.” As Turbine, Sony, and more have proven before us, the seeming majority who bash everything with a free option and a cash shop ultimately turn up as a very vocal, very tiny minority. There are, of course, those who will claim that Champions Online will have died without making the switch, and they are probably correct in that assessment.

However, if Cryptic Studios is going anywhere now, they’re going to the bank. According to Cryptic, the number of unique logins, concurrent players, and revenue have spiked over 1,000% since the game went free last month. To celebrate, Cryptic is placing a one-hour xp boost in the Cryptic Store for free, limited one per account. If you’re jonesing for some quick cash, the item is apparently tradeable, so save it and see if someone will buy it for a good amount of in-game money.

Having Champions Online free to play will be an interesting move in the months/year to come, as this means more competition for City of Heroes and DC Universe. Will the competition have to adapt to survive? Will Iron Man have to face his one true fear in order to defeat his nemesis? Find out all this and more! On the next issue of Amazing Issues of Amazing Amazements!

Since it had to be asked: Does Bill Roper regret leaving Cryptic now? Someone just missed a fat bonus check.