Konami Posts Optimistic Earnings Report, Despite Being Konami
It’s been one year since Konami became the most reviled company in the gaming community by shutting down nearly all their AAA console projects, firing Hideo Kojima, and cancelling their Silent Hill project so thoroughly that the demo for it ceased to work. Surely they’ve been suffering for their sins since then, right? …..Well.
Konami published their latest earnings report today, and it shows a 229.8 percent increase in profit, which means they earned $183 million more in US dollars than they did in the previous year. Life just isn’t fair.
HOWEVER…..when you look more closely at the data, it’s not as rosy as Konami would have you believe. While profits are up, it’s partially the result of cost-cutting and other measures….revenue actually went DOWN 8.9 percent. And remember when they vowed to put all their focus into Japanese pachinko machines? That has hardly paid off:
Revenue 2016 (Billion Yen)
- Digital Entertainment (Video Game) : 132.7
- Health & Fitness : 71.3
- Gaming & System (Arcade) : 34.3
- Pachislot & Pachinko Machines : 12.1
The earnings report clearly shows their video game-related output earned the lion’s share of their revenue last year. People still want Konami’s games even if Konami doesn’t want to make them.
This may be why we’re starting to see a reversal in policy, though it’s slow. Konami bought the Bomberman brand from the bankrupt Hudson Soft a few years ago, and we thought we’d never see it again as a consequence — but Bomberman is back, in classic form, in a launch title for the Nintendo Switch. Konami is also allowing Frederator Studios to create a mature-themed Castlevania action cartoon for Netflix, even if they’re not doing anything with Castlevania at the moment.
We couldn’t tell you if Konami is seeing the error of their ways or not, but there’s at least a little hope here.