Tag: Sales

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”

Activision Blizzard Q4 Finances: Lesser Billions


Activision Blizzard has released their fourth quarter financial reports and if you were hoping the company would burn to the ground following last year’s Hearthstone debacle, well you’re going to be sorely disappointed.

The positive side of this year’s Q4 report is that Activision didn’t pair an announcement of record revenues with hundreds of layoffs. We still expect the company to siphon a few hundred million in taxpayer dollars for simply existing in 2019. Unfortunately Activision hasn’t been able to keep up its record results from last year as the company has seen multiple straight quarters of revenue loss. Sad for the investors, but since Activision isn’t infinitely expanding not quite a surprise.

Despite this, Q4 results exceeded expectations according to Bobby Kotick.

“Our fourth quarter results exceeded our prior outlook for both revenue and earnings per share,” said Bobby Kotick, Chief Executive Officer of Activision Blizzard. “Our recent Call of Duty® success illustrates the scale of our growth potential, as we expanded the community to more players in more countries on more platforms than ever before. With our strong content pipeline across our franchises and momentum in mobile, esports, and advertising, we look forward to continuing to delight our players, fans and stakeholders in 2020 and beyond.”

Net revenue dropped from $2.3 billion for Q4 2018 to $1.98 billion in 2019, while overall net bookings similarly fell. Activision boasted a monthly average user rate of 409 million with a large portion coming from King (249 million) and of course the ongoing success of Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and Overwatch.

Investors are happy because Activision increased dividend payouts by 11% and you have to focus on the important things.

Source: Activision

The Game Awards: Epic Store Sale & Free Games


The Game Awards is here, or at least will be here in roughly eight hours from this article’s publishing.

Ahead of Geoff Keighley’s award show, the Epic Game Store has launched a Game Awards sale. The sale runs from today (Dec. 12) through December 16 and includes discounts on titles up for awards including Control, Borderlands 3, and The Outer Worlds. Check it out at the link above. Nintendo has similarly launched a sale for its favorite titles, including current and previously nominated games. Over at the Square Enix store, you can get a good deal on Final Fantasy XIV.

Meanwhile The Escapists is available for free on the Epic Game Store. You can grab a copy between now and December 19.

Over at Steam, Crytek is hosting a free play period for Hunt: Showdown. Hunt launched back in August and is a competitive PVP bounty hunting game with heavy PvE elements. The free weekend runs until Sunday. Team-based tactical FPS Insurgency: Sandstorm is also holding a free play period on Steam along with a 50% sale if you decide you want to pick the game up after giving it a trial run.

Tune in to the Game Awards tonight.

Best MMORPG Sales, Courtesy of Massively Overpowered


I’m not going to say that MMO Fallout doesn’t run massive sales roundups because I don’t get paid to do this, but the last time I checked I haven’t written myself a single check that hasn’t bounced. Thankfully while I might be both a cheap boss and a layabout worker (have you seen this website recently?), there is one crew that prides itself on their work.

If you’re looking for a roundup of the best sales this week has to offer, check out Bree’s post over at Massively Overpowered. She details not just sales on games but sales within games if you’re looking for that latest piece of Lord of the Rings Online DLC or World of Warcraft expansion.

Check it out. It’ll save you a buck.

Netmarble Posts $72.9 Million In Quarterly Profit


Netmarble; you know them from Lineage II Revolution and Marvel Future Fight among other things.

This week Netmarble posted their third quarter financial documents and the results are pretty good. Company sales amounted to $533.5 million resulting in $72.6 million in operating profit and $72.9 million in net profit over the quarter spanning July to September. Quarterly sales increased 17% over last year while net profit increased 53.7% compared to the same time in 2018.

“Netmarble had significant increases in both sales and operating profit in Q3, reflecting both domestic and overseas performances of new games launched in Q2”, said Young-sig Kwon, CEO of Netmarble. He added, “At G-Star 2019, we unveiled the highly anticipated new game titles ‘Seven Knights Revolution’ and ‘Ni no Kuni: CROSS WORLDS’ for the first time and introduced ‘A3: STILL ALIVE’ and ‘Magic: ManaStrike”

Netmarble’s big revenue machines are Marvel Contest of Champions and Lineage II Revolution each pulling 14% of the company’s total sales. Upcoming titles include Magic: ManaStrike, A3: STILL ALIVE, Seven Knights Revolution, and Ni no Kuni: CROSS WORLDS.

Source: Press Release

Call of Duty, WoW Classic Make Activision Blizzard Mucho Dinero


The success of World of Warcraft Classic could only come as a shock to J. Allen “You think you do but you don’t” Brack, but to the rest of the world the idea that the classic servers brought back a lot of players isn’t surprising in the least.

Activision released their third quarter statements for 2019 and the results are pretty great for them. With sales from Call of Duty BLOPS 4 and WWII still strong and World of Warcraft Classic leading the way, Activision hauled in $1.28 billion dollars compared to $1.51 billion in 2018. World of Warcraft Classic drove subscriptions to its highest quarterly increase in franchise history while Candy Crush somehow continues to grow in revenue. In addition, the launch of Call of Duty Mobile has been a major success in terms of downloads and revenue.

Despite recent controversy, Blizzard has created a good amount of hype with the announcement of Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV at this year’s Blizzcon.

The quarter ends on September 30 and does not reflect any potential consumer reaction to the Blitzchung Hearthstone controversy, nor does it include sales from the latest Modern Warfare title.

Source: Activision report

App Annie Reports Top Mobile Spending For 2018


App Annie, a company that provides analytical data for mobile apps, released a list this week of the top companies of 2018 by worldwide consumer spending. The top members of the list might not be all that surprising, with game companies including Tencent, Activision Blizzard, and Netmarble topping the charts.

  1. Tencent
  2. NetEase
  3. Activision Blizzard
  4. Bandai Namco
  5. Netmarble
  6. Sony
  7. Supercell
  8. Mixi
  9. Playrix
  10. Giant Network

App Annie did not include specific data on how much each company brought in in revenue, but considering the market surpassed $92 billion last year, it’s bound to be a truckload.

Sony Accidentally Leaks Game Stats For Top PS4 Titles


Like most digital storefronts, Sony likes to keep its actual sales numbers hidden from the general public. That task became a bit harder this week when a promotion meant to celebrate player achievements in their games accidentally made public more data than was intended.

Sony’s My PS4 Life is a fun way of showing off your achievements on Playstation, it tells you how many hours you’ve invested, your top games, and even your rarest achievement and how many other players have it, among other details. What it also made public, however, was the number of players who had earned certain achievements. Coupled with the factor that Playstation displays the percentage of players who have earned said achievement, and it’s pretty easy to get a rough estimate on the number of people who have purchased/played said game.

The website Gamstat has set up to turn those stats into general figures, and the results aren’t all that surprising. Top played games on the PS4 include Grand Theft Auto V along with the last four iterations of Fifa, Minecraft, Call of Duty, Rocket League, and Fortnite. Fallout 76 has pulled about 407,000 players on the console.

The data isn’t exact science, as PS4 trophy figures around up to the .1%, but it does give a good idea as to how each game sold.

(Source: Reddit)

Square Enix Black Friday Sale: Use SHIP10OFF For $10 Off Shipping


It’s Black Friday, and that means sales, sales, and more sales.

Over at the Square Enix store, you can grab a number of games at a heavy discount including Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood or its collector’s edition. For physical orders over $75, type SHIP10OFF in the promo box for $10 off shipping fees.

All kinds of games and merchandise are on sale, from PS4, Xbox One, Xbox 360, 3DS, DS, and we even saw a couple of physical Playstation 1 games available.

Some highlights:

  • FFXIV: Stormblood – $19.99 (50%)
  • FFXIV: Stormblood Collector’s Edition – $30 (50%)
  • Chrono Cross (PS1 physical) – $3.74 (75%)
  • Shadow of the Tomb Raider: Steelbook Edition – $50 (44%)
  • NieR: Automata – $20 (50%)
  • Final Fantasy XV Royal Edition – $20 (50%)
  • Select merchandise up to 40% off.

The sale is good until November 26 at Midnight PDT. Certain restrictions may apply, ask your doctor if Moogles are right for you.

[Not Massive] Steam Users Are Angry Over Early Tomb Raider Discounts


Shadow of the Tomb Raider is currently on sale and customers aren’t happy.

The third and final installment in the latest Tomb Raider reboot series, Shadow of the Tomb Raider launched on PC on September 14 to pretty favorable reviews and Steam numbers. This week, the game was discounted 34% off on October 16, 47% off for the Croft edition bundle that contains extra DLC. Since the sale began, the game has been bombed by negative reviews citing the game’s sale price. So why the issue?

Normally sales would be a great thing, but early adopters are not happy about Shadow of the Tomb Raider going on such a deep discount a month after launch and not even during a heavy sale period for Steam. More specifically, many of the negative reviews appear to be coming out of China where players are expressing frustration between two major topics: That the game is going on sale so soon after launch and of long wait times to import the game into China adding to the fact that the game is on sale so soon after many received their copies. In short, people feel burned that Square Enix discounted the game so heavily and so quickly after launch.

It seems more than likely that Square Enix is offering this deal because sales from Shadow of the Tomb Raider have been far less than anticipated. Back in September, Eurogamer noted that Shadow’s physical sales in the UK were down 70% from 2013’s Tomb Raider reboot, a more troubling idea considering that Tomb Raider initially launched just on the Xbox and this time around launched on all three major systems (PS4, Xbox One, PC) simultaneously. It also doesn’t help that Shadow cost about $100 million to make. Not a good sign.

Oddly enough, Amazon has the Playstation 4 edition of Shadow of the Tomb Raider on sale for $44.95, a 25% discount, while the Xbox version is only 5% off at $57. I guess we know which version sold better.

We fully expect Square Enix to comment on Shadow’s sales as the company has been pretty forthcoming about its opinions in the past.