Konami Looking Deeper Into Social Gaming

Konami has published financial reports that will alarm some but should surprise nobody. According to a Eurogamer report (published without source, naturally) Konami’s financial situation is in better shape than many but that’s mostly due to a larger profit share thanks to its investment in social gaming.

Net revenue is much the same as last year but profit has almost doubled to ¥23 billion (around £178.5 million). This is largely due to the rise in popularity of their SNS (Social Networking Services) games on Gree and Mobage. It should be noted that Konami also owns fitness and health clubs in Japan, as well as having some presence in the arcade scene over there with Pachinko and slot machines. Their digital entertainment division accounts for 53% of their business.

Last year, Konami’s Consumer Games (things like PES and other console games) accounted for roughly 50% of their digital entertainment revenue. This year, that figure is down to 36% with their social games profits rising from 12% to around 26%.

PES sales this year were over a million units down on last with the total console game sales dropping from 21.94 million to 18.93 million. Metal Gear sales increased by roughly 200,000 units.

Against such a backdrop, our belief is that we can increase the number of ‘outlets’ for the Konami Group’s game content by taking advantage of opportunities presented by the emergence of new devices and developing our business around game content. We intend to develop ways of playing games that match the characteristics of each device.

Looking ahead, we will continue to expand our line-up, utilising previously established production and operational expertise and rich content resources, while continuing to support a wide range of devices and develop towards new overseas platforms, such as the provision of content to Zynga.

Now I could be reading too much into this but that last line sounds like Konami, traditionally one of the big Japanese console game publishers, wants to make DLC or premium items for one of the least respected (but, far and away, one of the most profitable) game publishers. This is the modern games industry, folks.

So the synopsis is, basically, console sales are decreasing while social gaming is exploding. It’s likely to make grim reading for the console platform holders but mobile stores like Google Play and the iOS AppStore will probably be feeling slightly more smug than usual.

Source: Eurogamer