Games Industry Finance Cheat Sheet: Winter 2024, 20/02/2025
Sony soars and everyone else doesn't in the latest quarterly results
This week’s Video Games Industry Memo is sponsored by Moore Kingston Smith
Accountants and adviser to the video games industry
Sony’s strong PS5 sales performance stands out in latest quarterly results
Niantic’s games biz set to be flogged to Saudi publisher Savvy Games
Avowed promises to be better than Dragon Age: The Veilguard (OR ELSE)
Ahoy-hoy VGIM-ers,
Well, this is a week where I’ve got very little to tell you about.
Aside from sinking an ungodly number of hours into the latest Civ, the past week has mostly involved quiet plotting and planning that I’ll tell you more about in a future VGIM.
But I do have an opportunity for you to grab hold of right now if you fancy it, dear reader.
I would like to meet you - or a relevant bigwig that you’re parading about the place - at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco next month.
In particular, I’d love to chat to you for a very special GDC edition of this newsletter and to support the research for my book Power Play which - gulps - is coming out in a little more than a year.
If you’d like to chat with me when I’m out on the West Coast, or want to grab a video call instead, email george@videogamesindustrymemo.com and we’ll get sorted.
Let’s get on with the Big Read, shall we?
The big read - Games Industry Finance Cheat Sheet: Winter 2024
Cheat code: Welcome to the first VGIM games industry finance cheat sheet of the year.
Brief tutorial: In case you haven’t seen one of these before, the aim of this newsletter is dead simple. I look at all the occasionally snore-inducing quarterly financial updates from leading video games companies. I then summarise their key results in quick-fire fashion, before wrapping up with some cheeky glib remarks to cleanse the ol’ palate. Magnificent.
Winter warmer?: In this cheat sheet, we’re taking a look at the top financial results from the final quarter of 2024 to see whether games businesses ended a bad year on a high (or, at least, less of a low than they experienced for most of the year).
The end of the beginning: So without further ado, let’s put this overly jaunty introduction to one side and get on with filleting some balance sheets.
Sony - PlayStationing on
Happy chappies: Sony Group had a very happy third quarter of its financial year, after the company’s revenues grew 18% year-on-year to ¥4.41tn ($28.6bn) and its operating income crept up 1% to ¥469.3 billion ($3.01bn). And it had PlayStation to thank for its glad tidings.
Powering up: The company’s Games and Services division increased its sales by 16% year on year to ¥1.68tn ($10.9bn), after the company successfully flogged 9.5m PS5s to consumers during the quarter.
History makers: As well as recording the best quarter for the console since its launch, it also propelled PlayStation’s monthly active user (MAU) count to 129m. That’s a new record for the business and suggests that efforts to proclaim the death of video game consoles may have gone a bit Mark Twain.
End of the (first) party?: But with the company warning that first party game sales proved disappointing in the last quarter, expect to see the company’s PC games push to continue in the years to come.
Microsoft - Everything needs to be an Xbox
Sometimes maybe good, sometimes maybe…:Microsoft’s gaming division delivered a mixed set of results in the second quarter of the company’s financial year.
Not gaming the system: While Microsoft as a whole recorded $69.9bn in revenue (a 12% year-on-year increase) in the second quarter of its 2025 financial year, Microsoft’s Gaming revenue dropped by 7% over the same period. Eep.
Not Xboxing Clever: The decline was caused in large part by a major drop in sales in Xbox’s hardware division, with revenues down 29% despite the presence of the holiday season in the quarter.
Given a game pass: However, Xbox’s content and services revenue grew slightly - and unexpectedly - by 2% as Call of Duty Black Ops 6 and Indiana Jones and The Great Circle played their part in driving up Game Pass subscriptions. Expect to see this result in a ramping up of the “everything’s an Xbox” rhetoric in the months and years to come.
Nintendo - The Switch Slump continues
Tough times: The Big N continues to be dragged down by the drawn out ending of its current console generation.
Not so Secret Slide: The company’s net sales declined 31.4% year-on-year to 956.2bn yen ($6.1bn) and its net profit dropped by 41.9% to 237.1bn yen ($1.5bn) as Switch sales slumped over the holiday period.
Switching off: Despite flogging an impressive sounding 9.54m Switches across the world in the last quarter (and crossing the 150m mark for the device since it launched in 2017) these figures represented a significant decline in sales - with purchases of the original Switch, the Switch Lite and the Switch OLED declining by 19.4%, 20.5% and 37.9% respectively.
Party on: However, there was some good news for the company in the form of Super Mario Party Jamboree. It sold 6.17m copies after it launched in October 2024, achieving a new sales record for the series in the process.
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From Tuesday 1st April 2025, any game commencing production will only be able to claim VGEC - presenting potential challenges and opportunities to businesses.
Find out more about what this change might mean for your business, and how to successfully plan for it, on the Moore Kingston Smith website.
Roblox - Not quite on a booking(s)
User generated disappointment: Roblox’s shares fell by 20% in early February, after its latest financial results proved a disappointment to the market.
Booking.vom: The company fell marginally short of its bookings forecast, reaching $1.36bn in Q4 2024 in comparison to its prediction of $1.37bn. Tough times, I know.
MAU-ma mia: More alarmingly for investors, Roblox’s wobbling MAU count became a cause for concern. On a year-on-year basis, its MAUs were up 19% to 83.5m. However, that figure was 6% down on the 88m it recorded in Q3 2024 - causing its share price to tumble.
Let’s talk about SEC, baby: And worryingly, there may be more problems ahead for the business. The platform’s recent ban in Turkey and a Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) that is likely to be investigating the accuracy of Roblox’s user count could bring its user count down further - possibly spooking investors who’d otherwise overlook a lack of profitability in return for a population sized user base.
Electronic Arts - It’s not in the game
Loot knocks: EA’s live service largesse looks like it may be coming under threat, judging by its most recent financial results.
Off target: The company missed its $2.4bn bookings forecast after recording a measly (in corporate terms) $2.22bn of revenue in the third quarter of its financial years - leading it to revise its guidance for the full financial year downwards in the process.
The not so beautiful game: The main culprit for the underperformance appears to be EA Sports FC 25, which saw fewer sign-ups at launch and lower rates of retention in the aftermath of its launch last Autumn.
Dragon them down: And the company’s poor quarter was compounded further by the underperformance of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which missed the company’s expectations by 50% despite reaching 1.5m players overall. Whoops.
Ubisoft - Uh-oh…
Tumbling downwards: Ubisoft’s revenues dropped by 31.4% year-on-year to €990m ($1.03bn) in Q3 of FY 2024/2025, deepening problems for the embattled publisher.
In the shadows: The delay to Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the strength of its release slate last year and the ongoing underperformance of releases such as Star Wars: Outlaws dragged the French business down.
Ready for service: There were some minor signs of optimism for the business within its long-established live service titles. Both Rainbow Six: Siege and The Crew: Motorfest continued to make a positive contribution to the company’s bottom line (especially compared to Xdefiant, its recently shuttered shooter).
Make or break: But with the company reportedly being eyed up by both Tencent and Savvy Games for investment - if not an outright sale - the fate of the company looks increasingly like it’ll be determined by the performance of the much delayed Assassin’s Creed: Shadows when it launches next month.
Best of the rest
Take-Two confirmed in its latest results that Grand Theft Auto VI remains on track this year. It also reported some numbers too, which no-one paid any real meaningful attention to due to the GTA hype (sorry Strauss).
Embracer Group’s sales dropped by 22% in the last quarter to $1.5bn. And while it has been buoyed by the news that Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 has sold 2m copies in its current financial quarter, it’s gonna need to sell a lot more games to clear its $292m debt.
Square Enix saw sales for the nine months leading up to December decline year-on-year. Despite recording an uptick in its MMO category and HD game divisions, poor performance amongst the company’s mobile and browser game biz saw its overall sales slide by 3.5% to ¥248.5 billion ($1.6bn)
And when it comes to big names yet to report, Unity’s numbers are due out later today while Tencent typically reports its first set of numbers in March. Commence your thumb twiddling…now.
The Bluffer’s Guide to the latest financial results
Do say: 2024’s final set of financial results underlined the transitional nature of the games industry last year, showing the uncomfortable tension between maintaining value in the sector’s long-established business models and refreshing the industry’s products and services in line with changed player expectations.
Don’t say: ..but are consoles dead or not, George? TELL MEEEEEEE.
News in brief
Pokemon Going Going Gone?: Niantic’s games arm is on course to be acquired by Savvy Games in a $3.5bn, according to reports in Bloomberg. The Pokemon Go creator had previously inked a strategic partnership with the Saudi backed publisher to bring its games to Arabic speaking markets, but it now looks like it’ll be Savvy’s long-promised headline grabbing mobile games acquisition instead.
Pause the Games: Speaking of Saudi Arabia, The International Olympic Committee has confirmed that the first ever Olympics Esports Games will no longer be taking place this year. SportsPro reports that the Games have been pushed back to 2027, with the Riyadh based not-for-profit The Esports World Cup Foundation (EWCF) conveniently becoming available to help with delivery of the project over the course of the refreshed timeline. Funny that.
AI, AI, AI: Elon Musk has once again been talking up the prospect of running an AI powered video game studio on social media. The far right financier posted a tweet last week saying that he would be founding a studio as part of his promise to “make video games great again”. Let’s hope for his sake his developers don’t implement too many anti-cheat measures, eh reader? *nudges playfully*
Show Pony: In further ‘how close are these people to authoritarian Governments’ news, Tencent’s Pony Ma was present at a meeting between China’s President Xi Jinping and all the major leaders of the country’s major private sector businesses. Bloomberg reports that the meeting appears to be part of a wider reset by the administration to back private business in the country to drive growth, support the national AI agenda and reduce its dependence on America. Which leads us into our next story…
Less than Marvellous: The North American development team partly responsible for free-to-play hit Marvel Rivals has been rewarded for their success…by being laid off by publisher NetEase. Game director Thaddeus Sasser posted on Linkedin about the layoffs in Seattle, which likely occurred as a by-product of the wider pullback of Chinese businesses from the Western games industry. Cool.
Taxing times: And finally, UK independent games trade association TIGA has called for the country’s Video Games Expenditure Credit (VGEC) to be bumped to a rate of 39% for all developers and 53% for independent games businesses in line with the film business. It’s a welcome proposal and a noble idea. But given TIGA’s lack of meaningful policy wins in the past decade, it’s unlikely to achieve its ambition unless it shows the diplomatic skills necessary to build an industry wide alliance to support it.
A message from our sponsor Moore Kingston Smith: Whether you're a game developer, a publisher or a co-development partner, we know how tough it can be to juggle your creative aims with your commercial ambitions.
At Moore Kingston Smith, we're here to advise and support your business at whatever stage of its growth: from setting up with the right business structure, to scaling up successfully and exiting on your terms.
Find out more about our dedicated video games services here.
On the move
AGBO, the games biz founded by the Russo Brothers, has appointed Pete Wanat as President of Interactive Technology...Simon Maxwell has popped up as a Board Advisor at We are Reach…Eslam Elshafey has joined Tencent as a Game Localization Expert…Erik Reynolds has founded a new consultancy called Strategic Entertainment…And Summer Tang has been promoted to Head of Operations over at YRS TRULY…
Jobs ahoy
Rocksteady is hiring a Game Director up in North London…There’s still time to become PR Director, International for Bethesda Softworks…Become Epic Games’s new Communications Director, Korea if you fancy it…Microsoft is looking for a Chief of Staff, Xbox Games Studios in Redmond for anyone fancying a frankly ridiculously cool job…And Qualcomm is searching for a PC Gaming Product Manager to work in San Diego…
Events and conferences
DevGAMM 2025, Gdansk - 27th-28th February
The Games Growth Summit, London - 28th February
Tokyo Indie Games Summit, Tokyo - 8th-9th March
Hit Games Conference, Istanbul - 14th March
Game Developers Conference, San Francisco - 17th-21st March
Games of the week
Avowed - Obsidian are back and this time with a Skyrim-esque first person RPG set in the Pillars of Eternity lorescape. Phwoar.
PGA Tour 2K25 - Ruin a great virtual walk by playing the latest entry in 2K’s swingingest sporting series.
Lost Records: Bloom & Rage - Discover the reason why you stopped talking to your friends back in 1995 (spoiler alert: it’s probably Pog related) in the newest game from Life is Strange’s creator.
Before you go…
What’s the video game equivalent of buying an old brick phone to stop yourself from scrolling through TikTok endlessly?
Buying a retro console or arcade machine, of course.
The Guardian’s Mabel Banfield-Nwachi spoke to console fixer Luke Malpass about the roaring trade he’s doing fixing up people’s old devices to let them play in disconnected peace.