EL33TONLINE: News tag archive: financialresults

A statement released yesterday by SCEA vice president, Ian Jackson, reveals an enormous rise in Christmas sales for the PS3:

“Early internal data points to an increase of more than 130 percent of PS3 hardware sales for the holiday season – since Black Friday – and we’re also seeing a growth of nearly 40 percent in total PS3 hardware sales for the calendar year.”

Jackson also touts their belief that Sony provided “the best software line up in the industry” during a pivotal year for the PlayStation brand:

“We’ve had a solid holiday season and have delivered consistent growth throughout this year. Two thousand eight was a pivotal year for PlayStation with the best software line up in the industry, a dramatic expansion of PlayStation Network including the launches of the video delivery service and the beta of the PlayStation Home.“

“We remain confident this momentum will continue into the new year.”

Fourth quarter financial results for publisher Take-Two were revealed yesterday, and they’re a bit of a mixed bag.

On the back of an 11 percent sales increase for the quarter, with net revenue up to $323.4 million, fourth quarter losses doubled from the same period last year, up to $15 million. $1.5 billion in revenue was recorded for the fiscal year of 2008, as the top performing titles over the course of the year were Midnight Club Los Angeles, NBA 2K9, Grand Theft Auto 4 and Carnival Games. Fiscal year profits were up to $97.1 million, the strongest earnings in Take-Two’s history.

Of special note, Grand Theft Auto 4 accounted for $710 million, or roughly 60 percent, of Take-Two’s fiscal revenues, $40 million of which (or 17 percent) could be attributed to GTA IV in the fourth quarter.

In light of the current economic doldrums - and possibly because of no new GTA titles releasing next year, excluding GTA IV DLC and GTA: Chinatown Wars - Take-Two have drastically reduced their expectations for the next fiscal year, despite highly anticipated releases in the form of Mafia II, Bioshock 2, Borderlands, MLB Front Office Manager, Major League Baseball 2K9, NHL 2K10, NBA 2K10 and the already mentioned GTA content.

Earlier this year, Midway posted quarterly losses of $34.8 million, leading to employee layoffs and project cancellations.

On Tuesday, Midway posted its quarterly revenue data, detailing third quarter losses of $75.9 million on revenues of $51.4 million, compared to losses of $33.5 million and revenues of $36.7 million during the same period last year.

This data also followed the news that Shari Redstone, a member of Midway’s board of directors, resigned from her position as chairman to focus on her responsibilities at another organisation, National Amusements Inc, an organisation from which Midway has previously received funds to stay afloat.

Now it’s being reported that Midway are to lay off 20 to 30 employees at their Chicago studio, seemingly as a result of the completion of two major Midway titles, Blitz: The League II and Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, through a practice of growth and attrition - a practice that is becoming worryingly more and more regular and recognisable as developer staff sizes continue to balloon.

Not a good time for Midway.

In what is turning out to be a bit of a shocking time for EA, it was recently announced that they were to close one of their studios, namely the EA Casual division.

This decision comes after the departure of EA Casual president, Kathy Vrabeck, who has in the past served as president of Activision Publishing. In an issued statement, EA said:

“EA has learned a lot about casual entertainment in the past two years, and found that casual gaming defies a single genre and demographic. With the departure of Kathy Vrabeck, EA is reorganizing to integrate casual games - development and marketing - into other divisions of our business.”

“We are merging our Casual Studios, Hasbro partnership, and Casual marketing organization with The Sims Label to be a new Sims and Casual Label, where there is a deep compatibility in the product design, marketing and demographics.”

The different EA labels, if you’ll remember, were instituted last year and comprised the EA Games, EA Sports, EA Sims and EA Casual divisions, essentially splitting the company up into four divisions.

For the quarter ending September 30th, Activision Blizzard posted revenues of $711 million, with a net loss of $194 million as a result of general expenses, the Vivendi merger, sales costs and compensation packages.

Activision Blizzard cited sales of Call of Duty 4, Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, Guitar Hero: On Tour, World of Warcraft, LucasArts’ Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and Guitar Hero: On Tour as massive contributors to their successful quarter, the latter of which has proven to be the best selling title in North America on the Nintendo DS.

CEO Bobby Kotick said, “In the December quarter, we will launch our strongest holiday slate ever, which is based on some of the best-selling franchises in the industry. We are excited about our holiday releases, which are all based on proven franchises, and will deliver our entire slate on schedule with strong product quality on our key titles. However, we remain cautious given the likely slowdown in consumer spending this holiday season.”

This was the first full quarter the company has experienced as a combined entity after the Activision/Vivendi merger.

While it was revealed and confirmed that THQ was to close five internal studios and make staff cuts at two additional studios, the extent of the lay offs hadn’t yet become clear.

It’s now been revealed that 17% of THQ staff, roughly 250 THQ employees, will lose their jobs, on the back of a net loss of $115.3 million for its fiscal second-quarter, compared to $7 million last year. Net sales were down to $164.8 million from $229.3 million during the same period last year. The job losses will apparently save $100 million in development costs over the next fiscal year.

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As far as EA’s financials go, their overall revenues for the second fiscal quarter ended September 30th was posted as $894 million, up from $640 million during the same period last year. These numbers were definitely a result of some of their strongest game launches in recent memory, including Spore, Mercenaries 2, Warhammer Online, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09, Madden NFL 09 and NCAA Football 09.

Up until September 30th, standout sales numbers include Spore, which has sold 2 million units, Madden NFL 09 selling 4.5 million and Warhammer Online selling 1.2 million units.

Net loss on the other hand reached $310 million compared to $195 million last year. As a cost-reduction plan, EA has announced its intention to lay off around 6 percent of its staff, which equates to about 600 employees. EA spokesperson Mariam Sughayer said of the layoffs:

“It’s a global reduction, not just focused on one studio or one location. The decisions that impact people’s jobs are always extremely tough, but all the people affected will be treated appropriately and respectfully, with the appropriate severance package based on their time at the company and other mitigating factors.” The layoffs are said to have affected EA LA as well as Pandemic, amongst others.

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In the financials, Sega Sammy revealed a net loss of $95 million for their first financial quarter of 2009, from $47 million for the same period last year.

Making up some of the numbers, their Pachinko division reported an operating loss of $39 million on net sales of $683 million, down from $873 million last year, while the video games division reported an operating loss of $37.8 million on net sales of $270 million, up from $140 million last year.

Game unit sales were just under 7 million units, comprising 3.2 million in the US, 2.9 million in Europe and 830 000 in Japan. These included 890 000 units from six Xbox 360 titles as well as nine Nintendo DS titles selling a combined 850 000 units. Strong performers for this period include Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk and Mario and Sonic at the Olympics.

Namco Bandai reported their 1st financial quarter net profits were at around $9.4 million compared to $25.5 million during the same period last year - a 63% drop. This is largely a result of the disappointing performance of their arcade and toy divisions, while their game division performance was up.

Game revenues were up to $234 million this quarter, up 3.8% from last year. 1.7 million games were sold in Japan, 1.39 million in Europe, 740, 000 in the US and 113, 000 in Asia, from a total of 13 titles. Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3 sold 420, 000 units in Europe alone, making this their single most successful title this quarter.

Full-year net-profit is expected to be at $207 million, on revenues of $4.3 billion for the fiscal year ended March 31st 2008.

Midway have announced a 34.8 million loss for the quarter ending June 30th 2008, on net revenues of $24 million (up from their prior guidance of $18 million in net revenue). Games released during this period included NBA Ballers: Chosen One on Xbox 360 and PS3, and Unreal Tournament III in Europe on Xbox 360.

These figures show a bit of a downward trend for Midway, with a net of loss of $14.3 million and net revenues of $31.8 million for the same period last year. Midway are remaining up-beat, however, as they say the best is yet to come.

Midway CEO and interim president, Matt Booty, said “At E3 this year, Midway showed that we have possibly our strongest holiday line-up in recent years, which we plan to kick off in September with TNA iMPACT!, a game that is garnering substantial buzz as a formidable competitor to other wrestling franchises. Following that, we expect the releases of Blitz: The League II and Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe to expand the audience beyond their core fan bases.”

Furthermore, their casual games portal, MidwayArcade.com, as well as casual games Game Party 2, Mechanic Master and Touchmaster 2, offer more to ‘look forward to’ in the future.

Midway expects net revenues of $52 million in the third quarter.

It appears Vivendi’s game division is relying a bit too much on the sales of World of Warcraft, with a not-insignificant revenue drop of 11 percent from last year.

A company statement read; “A comparison of the first half of 2007 and the first half of 2008 performances is not representative because first half 2007 included the hugely successful release of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade.”

That’s no excuse. Now they’ll be relying on Blizzard’s next release to plump up their revenue, with Wrath of the Lich King, an expansion pack for the World of Warcraft franchise, due later this year. Luckily the merger with Activision is now complete and the new company, Activision Blizzard, will ably take up any perceived slack.

Sales from other Vivendi divisions however, including Sierra Entertainment, Sierra Online and Vivendi Games Mobile, were up from last year, while 2008 second-quarter sales were up 6.7 percent, to $349.2 million.

Activision Blizzard has announced Activision’s stand alone financial results for Quarter 1 of 2009. The first quarter of Activision’s fiscal year 2009 ended on the 30th of June 2008, before the transaction with Vivendi was closed on the 9th of July.

Activision expects higher net revenues for the first quarter, approximately $650 million up from the prior outlook of $500 million.

The publisher’s performance was driven by Kung Fu Panda’s launch across North America early in Q1. Kung Fu Panda took the title of largest launch of a DreamWorks Animation licensed property by Activision.

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Nintendo has announced record sales and profits for its financial year which closed at the end of March 2008. The factory that built Mario posted sales of over 1.67 trillion yen ($16.2 billion), boasting a 73% increase over last year, and a 47% increase in its net profit of 257 billion yen ($2.5 billion).

Nintendo has increased its projected global shipments of the Wii for 2008 to 25 million. Not surprising taking into account that Nintendo sold 18.61 million Wiis during 2007, bringing its life-to-date sales to 24.45 million units worldwide.

Wii Fit was launched in Japan and has sold 1.85 million copies to date while Super Smash Bros. Brawl sold 1.61 million copies in Japan and 3.24 million copies in the US. Wii Sports, Wii Play, Super Mario Galaxy and Mario Party 8 also continue to enjoy strong sales. The number of million seller titles for the Wii increased from 5 to 26 in 2007.

The Nintendo DS sold 30.31 million units in 2007, bringing its life-to-date sales to 70.6 million. Nintendo has forecast shipment of an additional 28 million NDS units by the end of March 2009.

Popular NDS software included Pokémon Diamond and Pearl which sold 9.56 million units (life-to-dates sales stand at 14.77 million) as well as the two Brain Age titles which sold a total of 11.81 million units (23.81 million life-to-date sales now recorded). Other new releases that recorded strong sales included Mario Party DS, The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. Mention was also made of favorites New Super Mario Bros. and Nintendogs. 2007 also saw the number of million seller titles for the handheld increasing from 30 to 57.

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