[NX] Nexon Q2 2013 Financial Highlights: Revenues Up 52%; Nexon America Plummets
Continued high growth in mobile and Japanese revenue due to the company’s 2012 acquisition of Gloops continues to power Nexon Co. Ltd. (JP:3659) to strong financial results. A weakening Japanese Yen (JPY) has helped as-reported nominal numbers as well. Nexon America’s decline has accelerated due to disappointing results from Combat Arms and MapleStory, despite strong performances by Mabinogi, Dragon Nest and Vindictus.
Nexon also announced today that the nine year old Korean service of Mabinogi surpassed 100,000 concurrent users recently, a new record for the game.
- Finance performance exceeded even high end of forecast range.
- Revenue was 80.99 billion JPY ($837.35 million), up 52.2% year-over-year (YoY).
- Operating income was 34.14 billion JPY ($352.99 million), up 22.5% YoY.
- Net income was 26.67 billion JPY ($275.77 million), up 40% YoY.
- Operating income margin was 42%.
- Chinese revenue contributed 42% of the total, down from 47% last year. Overall Chinese revenue grew by 44% YoY, fueled by strong performances by Dungeon Fighter Online and Counter-Strike Online. Vindictus is also showing steady growth in the region. Cyphers will launch in China in the fourth quarter of this year.
- Favorable performances by Dungeon Fighter Online, FIFA Online 3 and Sudden Attack pushed revenue from this region up 30% YoY despite very disappointing results from MapleStory. Korea contributed 23% of total revenue, down from 27% last year and the releases of Dota 2 and Counter-Strike Online 2 later this year are expected to help growth along with existing titles.
- With financial data being included from Gloops this year but not last year (before the acquisition), as well as high growth by Gloops, Nexon’s Japanese revenue rose 227%. YoY Japan contributed 26% of overall revenue, way up from 12% last year. Revenue from most of Nexon Japan’s largest PC titles declined YoY.
- The North American market continues to decline for Nexon, and that decline has accelerated. Poor performance from MapleStory and Combat Arms could not be reversed by relatively strong performances from Mabinogi, Vindictus and Dragon Nest. North American revenue was 1.4 billion JPY ($14.47 million), 4% of total (down from 7% last year). Segment loss was 446 million JPY ($4.61 million), up 85% from a year prior.
- Europe and other markets continue to show relatively low growth rates. Revenues increased 10% YoY with particular mention going to the performance of Mabinogi in Taiwan which saw double-digit revenue growth YoY.
- Nexon’s Monthly Active Users (MAUs) was 71.0 million, down from 77.4 million year earlier and down from 71.5 million last quarter.
- Pay Rate (percentage of users using cash in Nexon games) was 10.2%, down from 10.3% last year and 11.5% last quarter.
- Average Revenue Per Paying User (ARPPU) was 2,181 JPY ($22.55), up from 1,521 JPY ($15..73) last year but down from 2,532 JPY ($25.08) last quarter.
Posted on August 9, 2013, in International Nexon. Bookmark the permalink. 12 Comments.
The msupdate Blog 
wow nexon NA. LOL
im getting back into maple so im sad now XD
Maybe if they were to put more quality in their game…
Maplestory as it is right now feels like it is handled by a indie developer…
A lot of GM’s and people within the company don’t know a lot about the game, no transparancy because if you let your customers know what is going on the world will end. Ooh did I forget about the poor quality of the content and lack of consitancy? *Points to:
-Cygnus rework as seperate job (mihile)
-Cygnus revamp
-Took em 5 years to complete a full set of a race and then fuck it up by not including their 5th job (Heroes – Luminous = mage & Resistance)
-Weird jobs (one job gets a seperate branch when NO OTHER jobs get that (Demon) or they randomly release 2 Super Adventurers who are considered a new race but actually aren’t, only to be merged with normal Adventurers 3 years later so we will all forget about it… Reminds me of the GS Ball story in Pokemon).
-Glitchy animations and really bad coding (Content not working properly like Aliens not being visible but their text does show up. Then 10 sec after that they randomly appear in the cutscene) & Jett.
-No consistancy with game’s rules (Kanna Hayato and Jett (?) still do not have Hyper Skills and most likely will never get that for some reason. This really REALLY shows how amateuristic Nexon as a whole is, not even making sure ALL jobs have the content before releasing it).
-Bad customer support.
-No activity on Forums (besides Aurtax but he is new so he doesn’t really count as being part of the company, he was just hired and is now hyper present… but what happened to everyone before him).
-Does not know what their customer really wants. I asume they just look at numbers (oooh whenever we release a new job we get 10million dollars), instead of really listening.
If you are confused as to what people might be wanting: Pre-BB server, BUG FIXES (Aliens), Consistancy like Hyper Skills for all jobs, no broken content, more GM visability in game even if it is through the Ban Messages in-game, more fun and unique events instead of Attendance check with rediculous rewards, more non-cash events/content (don’t wanna buy NX to use a magic Harp I found from a monster to have a CHANCE to get a “good” item).
Nobody likes you.
^ This. Robbin knows what he’s talking about.
But, I think Hayato and Kannas are getting their hypers soon in JMS.]
Thats all I can really object to. Maple is becoming more and more of a social game to me. Hanging out with people and enjoying some of the content at times. I never take training and equipping my character seriously anymore. Which is a shame because thats basically the whole non-social aspect of the dang game. Q.Q
Joey you really missed a lot before you started playing. The thing which made MapleStory such a great game for all those years WAS how social it was. When people logged on just to hang out instead of being obsessed with levels and damage. When guilds used at hangout in the FM and bossing was challenging and fun and no one cared if they died during a boss run. When people used to gather a group of friends and go exploring in regions they’d never visited before just for the heck of it. When everyone would announced their much rarer levels ups over buddy chat and get spammed congrats in return. That’s when the game was booming and that has since been lost.
“That’s when the game was booming and that has since been lost.”
FINALY, Biased Pro Nexon Guy Zach (BPNGZ for short, which is short for BoPiNGuZ) is admitting the game isn’t diong to well. And yes, admit it… content (especially based off of A LOT of other franchises) is really really REALLY bad. Both in quality, in what the community really wants, and just the content that is in it, or better yet, the lack of content.
I’ve never said that the game was at its peak or that everything was perfectly perfect and the game was growing and prospering and we’ll all live happily ever after. I’ve just always said that the whole hype about “OH MOI GAWSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH THA GAME ISH DYINGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” is crap. MapleStory is still popular and is still generating a large amount of revenue, regardless of the fact that that popularity and revenue is falling.
No. I’m sorry but no. I can count probably on one hand the number of other games which receive updates as big as MapleStory’s updates are and with the frequency. Updates in the game today are bigger than when the game was at its peak. In most other games, both F2P and otherwise, the usual update consists of some seasonal events along with a few adjustments to current content and bug fixes. Content updates which consist of new game features and functions, new towns, new monsters and maps, new classes, new options, etc., which come almost every month to MapleStory, are reserved for occasional major updates in most other games.
While I agree on the fact that Maplestory is one of the most frequent updating titles… The content in it still feels a bit shallow and empty. “Woooo 10% of the classes got a few new skills (Hyper Skills)”… or “ZOMG a new attendance event”. Sure, other games might only get new content every 8 months or so, but when they release content they release it in perfect-mode. Everything they release then is complete and there is nothing lacking. However, what Nexon does is they release a little bit of content every few months.
It is like you have a cookie.
Another F2P game gives you the full Cookie after 2 days, but Nexon decides it is a good idea to give you small pieces of the cookie every hour. Now while this is a better strategy IMO for keeping the players wanting to come back and every month give people a reason to come back.. It does create a really bad vibe around the game where people would only be active a few short days after new content is released, then go on haitus untill the next piece of content is released, resulting in only small but frequent spikes of players being online.
Now, if they did their best a bit more and gave those little pieces of cookie some more flavor (as in being consistant and giving EVERY job their hyper skills in a “hyper skill” update) it would give people more reason to play longer and maybe play till the next piece of content gets released. Just adding 10 new quests, a few new maps and useless rewards isn’t really worth playing 30 more days or however long it will take till the next udpate.
One of the things that annoys me the most is the inconsitancy and it really shows how amateuristic they are. They very rarely finish any content. It is like on the design table they say “yeah, let’s revampcygnus knights… crap ppl don’t like it… let’s try revamping them instead of making them a new job…. Cool people love it. Let’s do the same thing we did to all our other races and release one every 10 months”.
It creates a difference on a level of the game where there shouldn’t be one (jobs within the same race are completly unbalanced and can reach a different max level compared to the other jobs in that race, with the only reason being the developer not being consistant and releasing the Cygnus Revamp at the same time).
If they would have released the Cygnus Revamp for all the jobs at the SAME TIME, it would create a much MUCH MUUUUCH healthier game where a race would not be so divided and basicly have 2 jobs that do not fit the theme of the other 3 jobs in that race….. Amateuristic.
Too long; didn’t read.
@Robbin: Btw i del’d my blog because I have another plan in store. Whether I’m not too lazy to carry it out is up to me tho. :3
Hmm, long time no post here…
Interesting to see the results, slightly surprised at the performance of Nexon NA, though part of me wonders if the economy might be pushing this.
Slightly off-topic: Any EMS coverage here? I know GMS is normally the “newest” English speaking server, but given some of the recent updates (Especially this PSY promotion) it might be nice to find out a bit more.
Anyway, despite Maple not being in the best place right now, it’s promising to see new and original updates from them.
Nexon America has been struggling for a while now. I’m sure the economic conditions are a major factor. Nexon took America by storm through innovation and uniqueness and has struggled to maintain those qualities over the last several years.
Hardly, to be honest. I’m don’t personally keep up to date on EMS affairs these days although I try to still push out notable updates on all services of the game outside of GMS when I become aware of them.