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Dustforce devs explain what they earned, what they learned
Developer Hitbox Studios has cracked open the financial books on Dustforce, revealing just how much the indie release made. After the game's launch in January of 2012 and some major sales with Steam and the Humble Bundle, Dustforce has earned a total of $668,490 in revenue.That may sound profitable, but that's before taxes, Valve's take, and other fees are removed, which brings the total down to $489,404. Removing various software and hardware costs, accounting fees, and other expenses lowers it even further to $295,000, says Hitbox. In the end, for every $10 copy of the game sold, Hitbox earned $4.41 – which the studio's (now four) developers must split.Dustforce began with a $0 budget, as a game prototype made with GameMaker. After an IndiePub competition win, Hitbox was able to budget the $100,000 prize for the game's development, which it says was enough to support the staff of three for about a year and a half.Hitbox's Terence Lee says the release was ultimately worth it. The game's success and "the pleasure of making Dustforce was worth far more than the opportunity cost of working somewhere else." He calls the process a "fantastic foundation for us as a studio," providing experience and funds for work on Hitbox's next title, an FPS called Spire.
HTC pays price for One delays, reports worst quarterly profit so far in Q1 2013
Instead of reaping the rewards of putting out a lovely new flagship, HTC has just reported its lowest ever profit -- a mere $2.8 million in unaudited net income -- during the first three months of this year. That compares to $173 million in the same quarter of last year, representing a pretty catastrophic fall of around 98 percent. Underlying revenue dropped by a third to $1.4 billion. The reason? The top-end smartphone on which the company's fortunes currently rest, the HTC One, mostly missed its scheduled global arrival date in March due to manufacturing delays, so it effectively didn't exist during the period in question. It has only just become available to pre-order in the US and won't start shipping to customers until April 19th. At this rate, the HTC First -- the manufacturer's second big announcement of the year -- might actually deserve its name.
How freeloaders help free-to-play games succeed
Do those scruffy-looking nerfherder freeloaders (like many of us here at Massively) actually contribute value to an MMO? A new article at Gamasutra argues that yes, they do, and in fact are necessary to a free-to-play game's monetary success. "If you are going straight after this demographic at the expense of a wider audience, you will struggle if you want to be a worldwide success," the introduction explains, "especially if you want to be seen as real AAA-title rather than, say, a casual game. This is due to the fundamental fact that free-to-play works best at scale." The article lists three primary reasons why non-paying customers help a game. The first is that they bring new users via word of mouth, and a certain percentage of those new users will become paying customers. The second is that freeloaders can show appreciation in other ways, such as cross-promotion between games and generating community content. Finally, this segment of players can be the targets of advertising, which is in itself a huge revenue generator.
EA's Digital EVP and Playfish co-founder departs
Kristian Segerstrale has left Electronic Arts, where he served as the head of the EA Digital team and was responsible for overseeing most of EA's games-as-services, including Sim City Social. Segerstrale had joined the company as a co-founder of Playfish, which EA picked up about four years ago for $300 million. The division has been leaking executives, with two of Playfish's other co-founders leaving last year.With Segerstrale's departure, EA Digital will be transferred under the direction of good old Peter Moore, who will now oversee all of EA's revenue groups, including Global Publishing, Global Media Solutions, Worldwide Customer Experience, and Mobile and Social Publishing. That's a lot of responsibility already, but you know Peter – he can always do Moore.
Mojang revenue hits $237 million in 2012
We already knew that 2012 was a particularly legit year for Minecraft maker Mojang, what with its principle product being purchased over 15 million times and everything, but now we have a better idea of what success like that translates to in dollars. Well, technically in krona and then translated again into dollars, but whatever.Overall, Mojang's revenue for 2012 tallied up at SEK 1.5 billion, or $237.84 million at current exchange rates, according to GamesIndustry's translation of Swedish publication IT24. Nearly half of that revenue (SEK 640 million/$101.48 million) was derived from the collection of license fees. Meanwhile, pre-tax profits were reported at SEK 580 million ($91.96 million), although no post-taxes/net income figures were provided.One of Mojang's biggest hurdles is the non-universal nature of its online payment system, CEO Carl Manneh told IT24: "We have so many markets where we are not very strong yet," he said, "where many play Minecraft but few have bought it simply because you can't use our online payment solution there. That's something we'll get our hands to during 2013."
iOS games make 3.5 times more than Android counterparts
Popular App Store tracker App Annie has released its latest report, and the news is good for iOS developers. Not only is iOS revenue up in general (by about 20% year over year), but it's still about three and a half times higher than Android revenue. Both Apple's App Store and Google Play saw big revenue increases in the latter half of last year, as you can see above, but iOS is still clearly much higher, which is definitely one of the reasons developers are so keen to be on Apple's platform in the first place. It's notable that the top apps on the App Store aren't games at all: Apple and Google are the two top companies with the most downloads on the marketplace, and they don't produce any games at all. But in terms of revenue, games are still the biggest moneymakers on the store, and companies like EA, Zynga, and GREE are definitely picking up plenty of revenue. It's interesting to note that some of the companies on top of the revenue list are still only running one or two games, so as big as the App Store is, any developer out there with a big enough hit still has a chance to make the top revenue list.
AMD earnings continue decline with $1.16 billion in Q4 revenue, $5.42 billion in 2012
We can't say AMD's declining momentum was unexpected, but these results don't necessarily have us excited about the future, nonetheless. For Q4, the company posted revenue of $1.16 billion, which is a 32-percent drop from the same period in 2011, netting a loss of 63 cents per share. For 2012 as a whole, the company's revenue rang in at $5.42 billion -- a 17-percent fall from the previous year, and a $1.60 loss per share. President Rory Read references evolution and diversification when discussing outlook, but it's clear that the company needs to make some major adjustments before it can return to profitability. Let's hope that AMD's 2013 lineup, including the Temash and Kabini APUs, help to turn this company around. You'll find full Q4 and 2012 earnings in the PDF at the source link below.
Microsoft confirms 'a delay in approval' of updated SkyDrive app for iOS
Feisty, no? Following a report from The Next Web, Microsoft has confirmed to us that there is indeed a hangup in moving the updated SkyDrive app into the App Store. For those unaware, it was reported that Microsoft and Apple were deadlocked in discussions due to the former's decision to allow users to buy more storage from within the app. In other words, Apple's trying to maintain its controversial 30 percent in-app revenue split, while Microsoft is arguing that some users may end up buying more storage through the iOS app, but then make a switch to Android or Windows Phone. Apple's stance is that users who did such a thing would forever entitle it to 30 percent of the revenue, while Microsoft clearly sees things differently. Today, a Microsoft spokesperson gave us the following quote on the matter: "Similar to the experiences of some other companies, we are experiencing a delay in approval of our updated SkyDrive for iOS. We are in contact with Apple regarding the matter and hope to come to a resolution. We will provide additional information as it becomes available." While it doesn't say much, it doesn't outright deny the allegations -- something you'd think a company of Microsoft's size would be quick to dismiss if there wasn't a shred of truth to it. Hopefully the two parties can sort things out, but honestly, we'd suggest the Windows Phone team put the whole "add proper Gmail and Google Suite integration to WP8" thing above this little squabble.
Investor call reports World of Warcraft subscriptions back above 10 million
The results are in for the third quarter of 2012, and despite sluggish numbers the last time around, World of Warcraft appears to be on a rebound. During the most recent Activision Blizzard investor call, subscribers for the game were pegged at around 10 million, back up from the lower figure of 9.1 million reported during the previous investor call. While the number is a bit more vague than usual, it does break a trend of several declining months. Is it all because of Mists of Pandaria? Not quite; because of the way that the quarters are spaced out, the expansion is still a fresh release, and we won't know until the beginning of 2013 how much of a bump it gave to the game's overall numbers. The company as a whole also saw positive revenue from Diablo III and the Skylanders franchise, while Call of Duty titles have experienced a slight downturn.
Tesla reports promising Q3 results, expects to be cash flow positive by Q4
Tesla's shares are up 3.9 percent to $30.04 on Monday due to Q3 results that point to better things ahead for the Californian EV maker. Though it's still operating at a loss, the company recently reported revenues of $50 million for the third quarter alone, and is well on track to hit its target of $400 to $440 million by year's end. In a letter to shareholders, Tesla credits production increase for the success, stating that it "successfully transitioned to a mass production car company, growing from manufacturing 5 cars per week at the beginning of the quarter to 100 cars per week by the end." Indeed, it apparently delivered almost 350 Model S cars in Q3, and expects about 2,500 to 3,000 more of the shiny electric sedans to be sold in Q4, hopefully putting the company squarely in the black. We're not sure if its newly launched Supercharger network has anything to do with the recent uptick in sales, but hopefully this means it'll be able to pay off that DOE loan soon.
Halo franchise up to 46 million games sold worldwide
The Halo franchise is up to 46 million games sold worldwide. Microsoft gave us the impressive figure today ahead of the launch of Halo 4, which was recently revealed as comfortably Microsoft's most expensive game to date.According to Microsoft, Halo has so far generated $3 billion in revenue, there are 120 million pieces of user-generated content in Halo 3 to date, and 5 billion hours have been logged into Halo games via Xbox Live. We won't speculate on what all these figures may rise to following Halo 4's release next week.
ARM posts healthy Q3 profits: up 22 percent thanks to smart TVs and other growing markets
British chip designer ARM has just revealed its accounts for Q3 2012 and they show a familiar pattern: namely, a double-digit rise in both revenue (up 20 percent to £144.6 million, or around $230 million) and pre-tax earnings (up 22 percent to £68.1 million). According to Reuters, the company is attributing its latest bout of success to making "further inroads" into growing markets like smart TVs and microcontrollers. Of course, all of this is stands in stark contrast to the traditional x86 PC world, where giants like Intel and AMD have been struggling with weak demand.
Tesla behind on Model S production goals, aims for extra cash with stock sale
Sure, topping off a Model S in 30 minutes with a Supercharger is awfully handy, but production delays of the sedan will keep some future owners away from quick charge times -- and most importantly -- their cars for a little while longer. In a freshly published filing with the US Securities Exchange and Commission, Tesla revealed that it hasn't reached its goal of producing 400 Model S vehicles a week, which places them four to five weeks behind their 2012 delivery expectations. To date, just 255 of the autos have rolled off the assembly line, 132 of which have made their way to new homes. According to the Palo Alto-based outfit, ramping up production has been slower than expected for a number of reasons, including supplier delays and taking a deliberately measured pace for quality assurance purposes. Before the year draws to a close, Musk and Co. anticipate meeting their goal of churning out 400 cars each week, and a total of 20,000 by the end of 2013. Currently, the automaker has racked up around 13,000 reservations and thinks it'll be working to fulfill even more throughout 2013. As a result of the manufacturing lag, the firm has slashed its revenue forecast by as much as $200 million, estimating it'll rake in anywhere from $400 million to $440 million this year. In an effort to add cash to its coffers, the company is putting up roughly 5 million shares of stock for sale. Who's buying, you say? Tesla mentioned its CEO Elon Musk is interested in putting down a cool million bucks.
iPhone revenue greater than all of Microsoft's
The next iPhone is expected to launch next week and CNN Money decided it was a good time to run a list of superlatives related to the financial impact of Apple's smartphone. To start out with, Apple's iPhone business unit could be a Fortune 50 company on its own. That business unit is already bigger than all of Microsoft in terms of revenue. From June 2011 until June 2012, the iPhone generated $74.3 billion in revenue for Apple. By comparison, all of Microsoft's business units together generated $73 billion in revenue. CNN Money notes that if you take all of the revenue that Apple generates from the iPad, various iPod models, iTunes, the Mac and the 30 percent take of all apps sold, it still doesn't add up to the revenue stream from the iPhone. A year-by-year comparison of the impact of the iPhone to Apple's bottom line shows that in 2008 -- one year after the first iPhone was launched -- the device accounted for 9 percent of Apple's total revenue; now that figure is 53 percent. Of course, there's always the question of what "worth" means, as Forbes pointed out a few weeks ago. In this case, we're talking about sales, and that's a pretty fluid thing. Nokia's Lumia 920 could be a huge hit, for example, and the iPhone is no longer the "number one" smartphone according to one survey. Way back in Februrary Ed Bott did a breakdown of how Apple, Google and Microsoft make their money. Of course the iPhone was a major component of Apple's business, versus Microsoft's more distributed revenue streams, and Google's lopsided revenue stream (advertising). As MG Siegler points out, even if you took away the iPhone from Apple's chart, the remainder is still bigger than Microsoft's total business. That's significant. Apple is always good at showing off the numbers at its events, so we can count on even more amazing financial statistics next week.
Lenovo's Q1 shows 'record high' market share, profits up 30 percent to $141 million
After delivering an overachieving laptop, Lenovo has delivered financial results that also exceeded expectations, producing $8 billion in revenue and $141 million net profit. Those figures are up 35 and 30 percent respectively over last year, which the company has chalked up to a higher than ever market share of 15 percent. That growth came in part from a 59 percent sales bump in emerging markets like India and Brazil, on top of a 9 percent spurt in its home market -- lifting the company 24 percent in world-wide PC shipments for the quarter. Lenovo has also become the second largest player in China's smartphone market, after Samsung, now up to a 13 percent market share. CEO Yang Yuanqing also proclaimed that, unlike other Redmond partners, he wasn't stressed about Microsoft's Surface tablet -- and that his company had "much better hardware" than the software giant.
Chitika: Mountain Lion accounting for 3% of web traffic
Web tracking firm Chitika has a stat that's actually not all that surprising: Mountain Lion downloads accounted for a relatively huge percentage of web traffic this week. For all web traffic coming to and from Mac computers, Mountain Lions downloads specifically make up 3% of the total. And when you consider just how much bandwidth is being used, that means that Apple almost certainly sold plenty of copies of the new US$19.99 operating system. Chitika also did the math, and believes that Apple users downloaded 2.11 million copies of Mountain Lion in just the first 48 hours after release. Obviously, that's downloads, not purchases -- it's possible that users purchased the OS without downloading it. It's also possible, however, that users were able to download the software without paying for it (through promotional or other means). But even if 90% of those downloads were legitimate purchases, Chitika calculates that Apple has picked up $38 million in revenue from Mountain Lion already. Pretty phenomenal. The lower price and digital delivery options have apparently made Mountain Lion an early hit. We'll have to wait for official figures (and there may be even more adopters over the weekend, when people have time to actually upgrade an OS), but already, it seems like Mountain Lion is a nice success for Apple.
ARM sees profit surge 23 percent, tests forecasters' patience
Just when financial boffins expected ARM's consistent double-digit growth to slow-down, the company has beaten their projections with a 23 percent rise in pre-tax profit compared to Q2 of last year. It made £66.5 million ($103 million) in profit from £135.5 million ($213 million) in revenue from its numerous mobile and low-power processor design licensees. Analysts expected lower performance for the simple reason that the world's biggest chip-makers have warned of tougher "macroeconomic" times ahead -- rival Intel has been careful to dampen people's hopes for its next quarter, for example, and Qualcomm (a major ARM customer) has also reduced its forecasts. Still, it's all just different shades of rolling in it.
Report: Global MMO spending to top $12 billion in 2012
Number-crunching services SuperData Research and Newzoo released reports today forecasting strong growth in the MMO industry. According to the analysts, worldwide spending on MMOs will top $12 billion this year, and that's not all: The companies also predict that this number will increase to a whopping $17.5 billion in 2015. Other facts released in the reports: Yearly MMO market growth increased by 14% in the U.S. and 24% in Germany. The number of MMOs in the field has doubled since the start of 2011. Twenty-three of the 50 million U.S. MMO gamers spend money on subscriptions or microtransactions, a 3% increase from 2011. The yearly average amount spent is $127. More German players spend money on MMOs than in the U.S. -- 13% more, to be exact. Free-to-play revenues in the U.S. now account for 50% of the market, up from 39% in 2010. Science-fiction MMOs make up to three times as much money as their fantasy counterparts. SuperData CEO Joost van Dreunen says that the race for gamers' wallets is only getting started: "The current market saturation forces MMO publishers to compete over a finite gamer population." [Source: SuperData Research/Newzoo press release]
iPhone estimated to have generated $150 billion in revenue globally
Apple's iPhone launched five years ago this week and to say it has been successful is an understatement. Based on a Strategy Analytics report cited by AppleInsider, Apple has shipped 250 million iPhones cumulatively worldwide and has generated US$150 billion in revenue from these shipments. "The iPhone portfolio has become a huge generator of cash and profit for Apple," said Neil Mawston, executive director at Strategy Analytics. He adds, "A quarter of a billion iPhones have been shipped cumulatively worldwide in the first five years since launch and Apple reaches its fifth birthday at the top of its game." Apple now is one of the top smartphone manufacturers and among the top three mobile phone makers worldwide. Last quarter alone, the company shipped 35 million iPhones and this number may increase as Apple expands its business in Asia and other emerging markets.
Kickstarter pledges more transparency, publishes project stats page with daily updates
Every time we boot up a browser there appears to be a new iPad mount or Arduino project on Kickstarter, but just how many projects have there been to date? How many were successful? And how much might that microfunding startup be netting in commission cash? You can find all those answers through a new Kickstarter stats page (and some number crunching on a calculator), updated daily with key raw data that's tallied, and broken up by category as well. To date, 60,786 projects have launched, of which 24,986 (44 percent) were successfully funded, 31,722 failed and 4,078 are currently active on the site. Of the $261 million that's come in, $219 million has been in the form of "successful dollars," representing $10.95 million in income for the company itself based on a five-percent commission rate -- roughly the same amount raised for Pebble, a single project. Speaking of million-dollar-plus projects, there have been a total of seven, including one in the Music category, three in Games, two in Design and one in Comics (Pebble falls within the Design category, not Technology). There are plenty more stats to comb through if you've been hankering for a peek behind the scenes at Kickstarter -- it's all at our source link after the break.
