Tag Archives: full year financials

And here it is. We think we got pretty much everything, but don’t take our word for it. Listen to Bobby Kotick and Mike Griffith rabbit on about innovation and money for ages. You may as well. It’s Friday.

In a press releasing detailing full-year financials last night, Activision claimed it is now the biggest publisher in America, quoting NPD data. From here:

During the fiscal year, in the U.S., Activision grew its market share by 7.2% to a record 17.3%, was the #1 console and handheld software publisher in dollars, and had three top-10 best-selling titles in dollars overall according to The NPD Group.

For the fiscal year, Activision set an industry record for U.S. sell-through in dollars by a single publisher, according to The NPD Group.

The firm reported revenues of $2.9 billion for the fiscal year, as you can see here

Speaking in an investor call after the announcement of record financials last night, Activision publishing CEO Mike Griffith remained coy on the issue of adding new instruments to the Guitar Hero franchise, saying only that Guitar Hero IV would provide a “significant leap forward in innovation” when it releases later this year.

“For the holiday, we’ll provide a significant leap forward in innovation for Guitar Hero worldwide on all platforms including the PS3, PS2, Xbox 360, Wii, and again on the DS,” he said.

“We’ll provide more information detailing this specific innovation in a couple weeks.”

Griffith added: “We’ve put a lot of additional development resources, a lot of additional music licenses resources, a lot of additional hardware supplier resources against the title to fuel growth over next year. We’re excited by the increased musical content and innovation we’re bringing. We do expect a leap forward in innovation with our holiday launch, and we’re about two weeks away from providing very specific details on that.”

Other instruments are involved. Bobby Kotick’s already said so.

Thanks, Gamespot.

Speaking in an investor call after the announcement of record financials last night, Activision execs confirmed that a DS bundle with the upcoming handheld version of Guitar Hero – Guitar Hero: On Tour – will be released when the game launches on June 22 in the US.

No specific date has yet been given for the game’s European launch.

“[It's] a breakthrough peripheral-based game for the Nintendo DS that brings the Guitar Hero experience to the 41 million DS users in North America and Europe so they can play Guitar Hero anywhere, anytime,” said Activision publishing CEO Mike Griffith.

Thanks, Gamespot.

Speaking in an investor call after the announcement of record financials last night, Activision execs confirmed that a new, fully blown console game in the Tony Hawk’s series wouldn’t be released now until some time in the firms fiscal 2010, ending March 31, 2010.

Execs said the break was necessary “to deliver to deliver the kind of breakthrough this franchise needs.”

Project 8 got something of a drubbing from EA’s SKATE last year, which outsold the traditional skateboard-leading franchise by 2:1 in the Christmas 2007 period.

Hawk would be appearing on DS this year, though, the company said, and will employ some sort of secret technology to make it win.

“For competitive reasons, we’re not going to talk about it today, but we’re very bullish on the kind of innovation this will bring,” said Activision publishing CEO Mike Griffith. “And this won’t be your father’s Tony Hawk.”

Thanks, Gamespot.

Speaking in an investor call after the announcement of record financials last night, Activision execs confirmed that the firm’s upcoming Treyarch-developed Bond game, The Quantum of Solace, is being developed using the Call of Duty 4 engine.

Few details on the new game have been released as yet, although Acitvision did launch a sparsely populated website for the project yesterday.

It’s releasing alongside the next Bond movie later this year.

Thanks, Gamespot.

Activision has reported full-year financials of $2.9 billion for fiscal 2008, up 92 percent over the previous year.

Net income for the year was $345 million, or $1.10 per share, up from $0.28 per diluted share in fiscal 2007.

For the forth quarter ended March 31, the company reported net revenues of $602.5 million compared $312.5 in the same period in the previous year.

“Fiscal 2008 was the best year in our history and Q4 was the largest and most profitable non-holiday quarter, even though we did not release any new titles,” said Activision CEO Bobby Kotick.

“During the fiscal year, we were the #1 US console and handheld publisher in dollars for the first time ever, according to The NPD Group, and we grew our worldwide share of the console, handheld and PC markets year over year.”

More here.

According to this Gamespot report, THQ confirmed a new Ultimate Fighting Championship game for spring 2009 as part of its full year financials last night. There are no other details right now, but the title will apparently be tied to one of the UFC’s major events.

THQ announced a new WWE brand – Legends of Wrestlemania – as part of its financial release yesterday, to ship for 360 and PS3 in March 2009.

As the name suggests, the game will feature older and retired wrestlers. The company said the game will capitalise on the pay-per-view Wrestlemania event every March.

“We have generated significant year-over-year growth in key global territories with WWE-licensed videogames, including tremendous success with the WWE SmackDown vs. Raw franchise,” said Peter Matiss, vice president, global brand management, THQ.

“The development capabilities afforded by next generation hardware, combined with our established history and deep understanding of fighting videogames, allow us to leverage the strength of the WWE brand to further extend our leadership in the fighting videogame genre and bring this new property to market.”

There’s more on DarkZero.

The entire conference call following the announcement of THQ’s less than stellar full-year financials can be found here. The call featured Julie MacMedan (Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications), Brian Farrell (President and Chief Executive Officer), Colin Slade (Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer) and Mr Humble (Senior Vice President, Pie Division).

THQ has posted a $35.3 million loss for fiscal 2008, compared to a net income $68.0 million in fiscal 2007.

According to this paidContent piece, “THQ President and CEO Brian Farrell said that the company has three key initiatives to improve matters in 2009: a stronger slate of products; initiatives to improve product quality and competitiveness, and a change in cost structure to ‘generate significant operating leverage’.”

“In fiscal 2008, we did not achieve our revenue and profit targets and we are taking aggressive steps to ensure that we significantly improve execution in fiscal 2009 and beyond,” said Brian Farrell, THQ president and CEO.

“Going forward, we are focused on three key initiatives. We are rolling out a stronger slate of products. We have put in place and are executing against initiatives to improve our product quality and competitiveness. We are also realigning our cost structure to generate significant operating leverage in fiscal 2009. We believe these initiatives will restore profitable growth and improve value for shareholders.”

You can read the full transcript of the conference call that followed the announcement here.

EA will announce fourth quarter – and presumably full-year – financials on May 13 after market-close. There’ll be the usual investor call, which in no way will focus solely on the fact that Take-Two isn’t yet owned by the company.

Full details of how to get in on the call, etc, after the link.

More »

Ubisoft has announced full-year figures for the period ending March 31, showing a sales increase of 36.4 percent to 928 million euros ($1.45 billion).

Noted as cash-drivers were Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2 at nearly 2 million units; Games For Everyone (G4E) products, which topped 230 million euros in sales for the year; and Assassin’s Creed, which has now sold more than 6 million units.

“2007-08 was a remarkable year for Ubisoft, underpinned by three strategic achievements: Continued strengthening of existing franchises such as Rainbow Six, Rayman, The Settlers and Ghost Recon which recorded excellent sales levels,” said company supremo Yves Guillemot.

“The sharp ramp-up of the ‘Games For Everyone’ casual range, whose sales figures tripled over the year. A steady output of new releases with Assassin’s Creed and Imagine that have performed exceptionally well. These strategic focuses will once again be the key to our success in 2008 which is set to be another record year for the industry with growth expected to reach at least 15%. Ubisoft’s games line-up is particularly strong, with no fewer than seven existing franchises, five new releases and new brands in the casual segment.”

Ubisoft is targeting 1 beellion euros in sales for fiscal 2009.

Whoops. Midway reported full year financials yesterday for the period ending December 31, posting net revenues of $157.2 million, compared to net revenues of $165.6 million last year, and a cringe-worthy loss of $97.4 million (or $1.07 per share). This is compared to the loss of $77.8 million (or $0.86 per share) in 2006.

Despite the horror, boss David Zucker looked to the future.

“We expect 2008 to be a significant year for Midway, with more front-line releases than 2007, including some ambitious new intellectual properties with broad market appeal, reinvigorated franchises with well-established fan bases, and some new opportunities in the casual games space with console titles and a new casual games portal,” he said. “In the near future we expect to reveal more details on our line-up, such as the recent announcement of This Is Vegas.”

The company also announced that it has ended its $30 million secured credit facility with Wells Fargo Foothill and entered into a new credit facility of $90 million with National Amusements. The money will be used for stuff, you know, like paying people.