Compilation / Mobile Game That Little Thing Zeta
Recently, Nintendo, EA, Capcom, Roblox and other foreign game manufacturers have announced their latest financial reports, which not only show the highlights of their performance, but also reveal their future strategies to a certain extent.
The highlights of these companies' financial reports have been compiled and sorted out:
01
Nintendo
In the 2024 fiscal year ending March 31, Nintendo's turnover was 1,671.8 billion yen and operating profit was 528.9 billion yen, an increase of 4.4% and 4.9% year-on-year, respectively, while the total global sales of the Switch have reached 141.32 million units. Meanwhile, Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa confirmed that the company will reveal the successor to the Switch by March 2025.
In terms of software sales, Switch games sold a total of 199.7 million copies in fiscal year 2024, down 6.7% year-over-year. For the entire fiscal year 2024, the total number of Switch players reached 123 million, up from the previous year's figure (116 million).
The financial report also mentioned that Nintendo's mobile and IP-related revenue in fiscal 2024 increased by 81.6% year-on-year to 92.7 billion yen (about 599.7 million US dollars) due to the global hit of "The Super Mario Bros. Movie". In addition, the animated film drove sales growth for specific games, especially Mario Kart 8 Deluxe: the game sold 8.18 million copies in fiscal year 2024 and has sold 61.97 million copies since its release in April 2017.
In fiscal year 2024, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is Nintendo's highest-selling first-party game (20.61 million copies), followed by Super Mario Bros. Marvel with 13.44 million copies. By the end of March, Nintendo's two new titles had sold more than one million copies, namely "Brigitte Princess: Show Time" (1.22 million copies) and "Mario vs. Donkey Kong" (1.12 million), which were released in March. A total of 31 Switches sold more than 1 million copies throughout the fiscal year, including 20 Nintendo first-party games.
02
EA
In fiscal 2024, EA generated revenue of $7.56 billion, pre-sale service revenue (bookings) of $7.43 billion, and net income of $1.27 billion, up 2%, 1% and 59% year-over-year, respectively.
"Over the past year, EA has launched larger, bolder world-class entertainment products that have attracted hundreds of millions of players and fans." Andrew Wilson, CEO of EA, said, "We're going to strike while the iron is hot and build on the momentum we have today with a slew of incredible new games and set us up for accelerated growth in the future." ”
EA expects the company's revenue in the new fiscal year to be in the range of $7.1 billion ~ $7.5 billion, while net profit will be in the range of $904 million ~ $1.09 billion, down 14% to 29% year-on-year. Wilson noted on the earnings call that EA plans to further integrate generative AI initiatives into the company's workflow in order to improve R&D efficiency. "Based on our early assessments, we believe that more than 50% of the development process will be positively impacted by generative AI (technology) advancements."
In addition, Wilson also revealed that EA is actively researching how to add advertising to traditional triple-A games.
03
Krafton
Krafton, the parent company of the developer of battle royale PUBG, has just set a new record for revenue in a single quarter.
According to the financial report, the South Korean game giant's Q1 revenue was 665.9 billion won (about 488 million US dollars), a year-on-year increase of 23.6%. For the full first quarter, Krafton's operating profit was $227.5 million and net income was $255 million, up 9.7% and 30.5%, respectively, year-over-year.
Mobile games ($295 million) accounted for the highest share of Kraton's total revenue in the last quarter, at about 60.4%, significantly ahead of PC games (36.6%) and console games (1.72%). However, Krafton emphasized in its financial report that the number of monthly active users (MAU) and revenue of the PC and console versions of PUBG have reached their highest values since it switched to free-to-play operations in 2022.
It's also worth mentioning that Krafton conducted the first beta test of the mobile version of Dark and Darker in South Korea in April this year, and plans to officially release the new game in the fourth quarter.
04
Roblox
In the first quarter of 2024, the revenue and pre-sale service revenue of Roblox, a sandbox game creation platform, were $801 million and $924 million, respectively, an increase of 22% and 19% year-on-year. However, Roblox's loss for the quarter still reached $270 million, which was basically the same as the same period last year ($269 million).
Roblox noted in its earnings report that the number of daily active users (DAU) of its platform reached 77 million last quarter, up 17% year-on-year, and the growth in the Asia-Pacific region is particularly impressive. Throughout the first quarter, the total amount of time Roblox users spent creating and playing on the platform increased by 15% year-over-year to 16.7 billion hours.
According to Michael Guthrie, Roblox's chief financial officer, the overall picture is that Roblox has "become more operationally efficient" over the past three quarters. Roblox expects that in the second quarter, the company's revenue will be between 855 million ~ 880 million US dollars, and the pre-sale service revenue is expected to reach 870 million ~ 900 million US dollars.
05
Capcom
Capcom has recorded a record profit for the seventh consecutive year and has achieved an eleventh consecutive year of revenue growth.
According to the company's financial report, in the fiscal year ended March 31, the net sales of the old Japanese game publisher were about 977 million US dollars and the operating profit was 366 million US dollars, an increase of 21% and 12.3% year-on-year, respectively; Net income attributable to shareholders of the parent company (US$278.1 million) increased by 18.1% year-on-year.
Capcom's highest-selling game product of the year is Street Fighter 6, which has sold a total of 3.3 million copies from its release in June 2023 to the end of March this year. As of March 31, Dragon Dogma 2 has also sold more than 2.6 million copies. The financial report also mentioned that since its release in March 2023, the cumulative sales of "Resident Evil 4: Remake" have reached 7 million copies, and about 3.3 million copies were sold during the performance statistical period.
In the last fiscal year, Capcom sold more than 1 million copies of 15 games. Among them, the overall sales of Capcom's old games are close to 40 million copies, which is higher than the sales of Capcom's newly released games (29.3 million copies).
06
Unity
In the first quarter of 2024, Unity, a well-known game engine service provider, had total revenue of about $460 million, down 8% year-on-year, and the loss reached nearly $300 million ($291 million). However, Unity notes that "the portfolio and cost-cutting program that we started a few months ago is complete."
In January, Unity announced that it would restructure its organization, laying off 1,800 employees, or about 25% of its workforce. This is the largest round of layoffs in Unity's history, following several rounds of layoffs in 2022 and 2023.
Unity said in its earnings report that it believes AI tools will become more important over time and plans to integrate its Muse toolkit directly into the engine's editor. At the same time, the company is gearing up for the release of Unity 6 later this year.
It's also worth mentioning that Unity recently appointed Matthew Bromberg, a former Zynga and EA executive, as the company's new CEO.
07
Square Enix
For the fiscal year ended March 31, 2024, Square Enix's performance was below the company's expectations. According to the financial report, Square Enix's turnover last year was 356 billion yen (about 2.28 billion US dollars), an increase of 3.8% year-on-year, but the operating profit of 208 million US dollars fell sharply by 26.6% year-on-year.
To improve the company's performance, Square Enix plans to implement a new three-year strategy. According to Square Enix, the company will "aggressively deploy a cross-platform strategy, including Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox and PC," and expand its IP to more markets and media channels. At the same time, Square Enix intends to "rebuild its overseas operations from the ground up" and optimize costs in its offices in Europe and the United States through "structural changes."
In fiscal 2025, Square Enix expects the group's operating profit to reach $256 million, up 22.9% year-over-year. However, the company expects its full-year turnover to continue to decline by about 13% to $1.98 billion.