Mobile games industry news (w/e 9 August 2013)

hello and welcome to pocketgamer.biz video news Roundup of the week this is the week ending the 9th of August 2013 um it's the summer not really in the UK rather great at the moment um but it's a not been a vment of news this week um we've had casual connect last week and we've had we have the big German game show um Gamescom and GDC Europe um starting a week Monday um so I think people are keeping their news back a little bit um we have been seeing um for people who like numbers like me it's been the uh Financial kind of quarters kind of week um so it's always kind of fascinating to get the uh every every uh three months we get a look at the companies who are on the stock various stock exchanges around the world they have to create their give out their figures so kind of investors can see if they're doing well or not so we've had quite a lot of that this week so that's really what I'm going to focus on at the moment um so obviously we kind of talk a lot about the mobile games industry being in massive explosion iive growth and and

obviously for some companies it is but um what goes up must come down and you have big growth and it's kind of how you sustain their growth is kind of an interesting thing to consider and what we've seen actually um with a lot of companies who are giving out their financials is um they've been growing quite fast over the last 12 months um and now they're kind of um uh kind of sales are kind of plateau and and profits are kind of maybe declining a little bit so let's have a look through some of these so um one one company that announced it U this was in anouncing it's uh Q Q2 figure so basically everyone's giving out figures for the months April to June 2013 so come to us one of the big Korean Publishers it's been growing very quickly um over the last 12 months um and it but it figures it sales figures for Q2 actually down 8% to um $18 million um and even though the Korean market is still growing quite fast and um and has grown very fast it's it's kind of uh you're kind of getting this competitive effect now so partic the

particularly a lot of growth has come from from the kacal games platform which a month which started only 12 months ago um and was just one or two games being released a week and now we're seeing five or six games released a week there so while there's a lot more throughput of games happening there's a lot more comp competition within we know within games companies to get the um to get the games into into players kind of hands and the growth of kaca hasn't obviously created only a certain number of millions of people so that's not grown as fast as the number of games being released every week so that's had quite a big impact on come to us and I think we'll see with lot of the Korean companies now they the last 12 months they focused a lot on Korean growth and now they kind of like kind of readjusting themselves obviously Korea fairly small on a on a global basis so we kind of look to see companies like um uh kind of come to us uh kind of refocusing a bit internationally um the other thing the other interesting thing come to us it's it's kind of growth on something like caca has come very much from kind of very simple social type games and it's also had quite a um a good track record with with hardcore

RPGs not on kacal but just more generally both those kind of categories have have shrunk over the last 12 months uh but it seen quite a big um increase in its kind of sports or sport It Sports genre has been kind of quite steady so it does baseball games and has has had a golf game that's come out that's done quite well for it internationally so so that's come to us um Al kind of staying in Asia there's a DNA which is one of the massive Japanese social gaming platforms um it's announced its figures so let's have a look at those so uh same period it's it's uh April to June this year so it's um it sales actually up 10% to 5 six sorry $526 million obviously much much bigger company um it runs it makes its own games runs a big platform it's interesting though still most of its um the vast majority of its Revenue still comes from Japan and even in Japan 25% of its Revenue still comes from from what we would call feature phones are either not not Android or or Windows phone or or or or iPhone

that's obvious that's changing quite fast um the the big kind of move for DNA over the last two years really since it bought um since it moved into America into the states and bought NG Moko is kind of expanding um internationally um and now it's uh for the last quarter it had um $80 million of of sales outside Japan which may not seem large in context of $500 million but it's um it said for the first time it was profitable outside Japan or that division was profitable outside Japan in June um and China is growing very fast obviously again from a very small base but again interesting for for DNA so while it Revenue was up 10% everyone lik to see Revenue up 10% um it's actually it's operating profit was down so I guess you kind of see this thing where your growth is quite big but you're kind of spending more um than you're kind of generating kind of free free cash um so uh that's uh that's DNA let's have a look at some some other companies so um one company I followed for for a long time now is glue mobile based based in San Francisco um and that's uh being a

mobile company being back in the days of java and Brew was making kind of U games based on movie franchises putting them out through carrier deck um it's had to have a really big transition it's taken it a long time it's moved free to play it's moved heavily into kind of iOS Android free to play it's basally been running its own um original Ip now it's not really using any external IP at all um it's a fairly large company you know it's turnover depending on the years has been 75 million to $100 million you know that's not insubstantial having massive problems though kind of uh transitioning from different business models and keeping it sales up and certainly keeping profits it's it's I think it's had like one or two profitable quarters in the last um kind of five six years um so that's the big Focus for for it over the last couple years has been getting getting to break even in profit because it's it has quite a lot of cash in the bank even now so it announced it announced its Revenue QT Revenue was down 17% um and it's making a loss it still has um 14 million or it has sorry $9 million still in the bank

it expects to end of the year it has $4 million in the bank let's get it right um and expects the end of the year with $9 million in the bank but it's just it's it's losses progressively each quarter just mean at some point it's going to either have to kind of hit Break Even or you know reduce it reduce its cost so it can be profitable it's going to have to go to the market again and try and refinance um and I think uh you know as I say sometimes we get a bit carried away with supercells doing this and and and and a king doing this those kind of companies have a great advantage that they're coming from like nowhere with very low cost bases it's very hard for these companies Like Glue even like EA and gameof to a degree who've come from a paid a pure paid games certainly a carrier based kind of games kind of Market from the last 5 years ago and coming suddenly freeo play is completely different you're working through app stor you're working in a completely different way and and it's very hard it's the whole kind of cliche I guess of building a rebuilding a plane when when you're when you're in flight so there's a there's a kind of a a quick look at some of the financial stuff it's not not just been about financials

um so I guess the big game has come out and I think we'll be talking about this a bit more um so so uh highly anticipated the drowning has come out from DNA's um the scattering Studio out of stockhome um we're having lots of debates within Pocket Gamer about whether it's a good game or not whether the the new shooter control mechanics or or what kind of hard Gamers want uh certainly we're going to have uh we'll be looking at the monetization techniques which are I think fair to say very sophisticated in in in future weeks so if you're looking for game this weekend I think the drowning is is the one to be playing and um and looking at our kind of regular features of Pocket game up Biz this week our monetizer looked at uh Game of War which is from machine Zone uh again another very experienced uh free-to-play games company and um very sophisticated monetization it's very it's quite a different game it's just kind of a typical strategy city building join an alliance build armies attack other kind of cities type game so we've become used to that um over the years um and kind of graphically it's it's kind of more of like a almost like a menu based kind of game um kind of

more kind of static it's not like a not like a first-person shooter game but um it's very interesting look at monetization methods and um and kind of employing some of these very simple um equations that we're using for monetizer so it's already very sucess not it's already a successful game it's only just recently launched so we definitely think we'll see it becoming more successful but we can already see it's successful it's top it's been top grossing in in a number of countries top 10 already um and we were looking so we we create this kind of I've up with this kind of uh coefficient monetization coefficient which basically looks to see how how kind of um depending on how you describe it how aggressively or how kind of technically it's trying to monetize and it came up with a with a number of 300 which is pretty high so anything over 100 I tend to think is is kind of quite sophisticated monetization the way it's trying to kind of um encourage manipulate however you want to use the term so that's another one to check out uh uh game of Game of War uh from machine Zone and on a side note we also had our our Pocket Gamer um summer conf conference this week in Manchester so um

there's a there's a hilarious uh if rather long video of some of us trying to play football or soccer as you Americans would say it so that's on the that's on the pocketgamer.biz um YouTube uh channel so check that out and also um as recently launched we've launched a Tumblr um kind of Channel as well which is particularly looking at our monetization techniques um monetization techniques and looking at kind of lots of screenshots and and and kind of like that's trying to be like a channel where we kind of trying to some of the knowledge we kind of like uh kind of gaining trying to put it out there so check that out that's on our that's our Tumblr Channel U that's all for this week um catch you next week