Have you ever been asking yourself about how or why the japanese gaming industry changed so much that now they are in a big inflexion point where the home gaming console and even the handheld market are in danger to disappear or be in a really weak position in the long term and how this
affect the whole industry?
Well, maybe with this info we can have a point of discussion and reasoning about that.
Last week, 4gamer, a gaming JP website, posted
an article about some research of the last quater of the fiscal year maded to what they know as "The Big 6" (Bandai-Namco, Sega-Sammy, Square-Enix, Konami, Capcom and Koei-Tecmo) which years ago they were "the Big 5" but a new company was considerated this time.
In the 3Q, Square-Enix was the company which has the best improvement in sales/profits than last year 3Q results.
In order (up to down) : Koei-Tecmo, Sega-Sammy, Bandai-Namco, Square-Enix, Capcom and KonamiBut this isn't the more important part of the article.
If we put things in perspective, 3Q-4Q (Holiday-Winter-first weeks of Spring) are the most important period for the home console market in Japan.
Sales and income are really big and the companies has their part of the market more lucrative that time. Look the comparisons between them in the 3Q period of last year:
Sales of 3Q for "the Big 6". In order (from left to right): Bandai-Namco, Sega-Sammy, Konami, Square-Enix, Capcom and Koei-Tecmo.
Income of 3Q for "the Big 6". In order: Bandai-Namco, Sega-Sammy, Square-Enix, Konami, Capcom and Koei-Temco.The position of the companies in both graphics have notorious differences.
-Bamco is a monster in sales and income, almost the double of the sales and the triple of the income of SS in that period.
-SS stood in their own with a really good portion of the sales and income.
-SE lost in sales with Konami but they have a good income.
-Konami had strong sales but a weak performance in income.
-Capcom was the weakest and the lowest in comparison with the first four but they had the same income as Konami.
-Koei-Tecmo had they best quarter in years with an improvement in both areas but the lowest part of market for being less porwerful that the others.
Now, here is the thing, although the market move billions of yens/dollars, if we compare this results with the 3 most prominent developers of the mobile market (GungHo, Mixi and Colopl, each one of them with a single strong app) in the same period of time, the results speak for themselves:
Sales of 3Q: In order (from left to right): Bandai-Namco, Sega-Sammy, Konami, GungHo, Square-Enix, Mixi, Colopl and Koei-Tecmo.
Income of 3Q. In order (from left to right): GungHo, Bandai-Namco, Mixi, Colopl, Sega-Sammy, Square-Enix, Capcom, Konami and Koei-Tecmo.-GungHo maybe didn't have the same amount of sales like Bamco but they surpassed them in income and that was a lot of money in their pocket.
-Both Mixi and Colopl have the same amount of sales as Capcom but they surpassed SS in income.
And to put the icing on the cake,
this 3 companies have the same amount of sales/profits almost every quarter.So, we can see clearly why many companies choose the invest more and more in mobiles.
Is this the principal reason of the big change? No, not at all.
See, I wait to the 3Q results for a reason:
Home console and handheld gaming market can to be profitable in this period but in the 3/4 of the rest of the year will not happen the same.If a company has a strong part of the mobile market, they have the same privilege as the other mobile gaming companies , although not the same sales/profits but a good one.
Just see how Bamco and SS has their FY in terms of profits for
packaged software (blue) and digital software (red).Bandai-Namco:
Sega-Sammy:
Well, that is for this OP. Any questions?
