Candy Crush Saga's Q1 2014 Profits Crush Nintendo

[StewShearerOld]

Candy Crush Saga's Q1 2014 Profits Crush Nintendo

Candy Crush Saga in Q1 2014 has managed to make more money than all of Nintendo's software during the duration of the past fiscal year.

Things haven't been going well for Nintendo recently. While the 3DS has been selling well, the Wii U has continued with its habit of missing sales goals by wide margins and costing the company <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/134309-Nintendo-Reports-455-Million-Loss-But-Has-High-Hopes-For-Next-Year>millions of dollars in the process. Adding insult to injury, it's been revealed that Nintendo's profit margins may be facing some competition of the candy kind.

We're talking, of course, about Candy Crush Saga which, according to recent figures, earned more money on its own than all of Nintendo during the entirety of Q1 2014. The difference gulf between the two wasn't a small one either. Whereas Nintendo ended the fiscal year reporting a $455.3 million loss, Candy Crush Saga's developers at King earned a reported $641 million in profit, two-thirds of which has been attributed to the popular puzzle game.

Granted, comparing King and Nintendo is, in many ways, unfair. King isn't beholden to selling hardware the same way that Nintendo is. Likewise, while Nintendo is in-arguably in a rough spot right now, you could probably make a strong case for Big N's stable of long running franchises being more valuable in the long run than Candy Crush Saga which, in all likelihood, will probably be supplanted by some other super-addictive gaming phenomenon down the road. That said, it's hard not to look at information like this and not feel at least some mild shock at how badly things have been going for Nintendo lately. Here's hoping the company finds a way to pull its bacon from the skillet in the near future

Source: <a href=http://www.alistdaily.com/news/in-q1-candy-crush-outgrosses-all-nintendo-games-combined>AListDaily


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[Grumman]

$641 million! Evil pays, and it pays well.

 

[Johnson McGee]

2010: Zynga Money Machine Leaves EA Behind - The Escapist

2013: Zynga Q2 Financials: Profits Crater, Active Users Melt Away | The Escapist

2014: Candy Crush Saga's Q1 2014 Profits Crush Nintendo

2016: [fill in the blank]

 

[Dragonbums]

Wow. This is a new low for the Escapist in terms of news article.

Really guys? Dipping your toes in new found clickbait articles?

Which ones next? "Angry Birds sells more units than all of Sony's new releases that year combined?"

Then again, the poster above me seems to have caught on to your patterns.

 

[MCerberus]

Casual Skinner-Box-on-a-Stick games are a blight on gaming.
Literally.
One will come in, sink into a population draining resources, spreading at an alarming rate. And to make things worse it corrupts the crop you want *Glares at EA*

 

[yamy]

Checks Kings financial results ... :|

Yeah typical poorly researched financial article.

That $641 million is NOT profit it's REVENUE and it's NON GAAP revenue which is not real.


Nintendo first quarter GAAP revenue $713 million and net income loss $328 million ( Okay that is terrible )

King first quarter GAAP revenue $606 million and net income profit of $127 million

The fact that King made almost as much as Nintendo did in revenue is still pretty impressive, given the relative size and history of the 2 companies.

 

[xaszatm]

Are we ready to throw in the towel on the Wii U yet? Honestly, I love Mario, and Smash Bros and Zelda and all the Nintendo IPs ( Well most of them at least ) as much as the next guy but I just can't bring myself to pay the price of a current generation console for a console that was damn near a generation behind before it was ever released. If Nintendo were to get serious about releasing a console that was up to date so that it had proper third party and online support I would buy the damn thing on launch. Hell, I'd probably be in line early right behind that fool in New York who wears his Power Glove out in public.

Were we ready to give up on the PS3 when it was released? Or on the Xbox brand since ever? They both had horrible jobs making a profit until late into the last generation. Currently, I'm more excited for games on Nintendo systems than for any other console except for maybe PC. Furthermore, are we still on the "Nintendo is behind this generation" bullcrap? Consoles are behind period. I think Smartphones will catch up to consoles within this generation. As long as the game is fun and has a consistent frame rate, I'm not seeing the care behind a 720p and 1080p.

OT: Well, these types of companies have a short life span if not done right, so we will see where this goes. Though, given King's tendency to be sue-happy, I'm not seeing a bright future for them.

 

[xaszatm]

Were we ready to give up on the PS3 when it was released? Or on the Xbox brand since ever? They both had horrible jobs making a profit until late into the last generation. Currently, I'm more excited for games on Nintendo systems than for any other console except for maybe PC. Furthermore, are we still on the "Nintendo is behind this generation" bullcrap? Consoles are behind period. I think Smartphones will catch up to consoles within this generation. As long as the game is fun and has a consistent frame rate, I'm not seeing the care behind a 720p and 1080p.

If Nintendo were just losing money I wouldn't be calling for them to bow out. But on top of losing money the Wii U is seriously lacking when it comes to games. The third party support is nonexistent and first party titles aren't enough to keep the system afloat. Furthermore, third party titles won't be coming. It's the same old song and dance that Nintendo has been doing since the N64. They release an underpowered console that developers don't want to put games out for thus leaving the console to survive solely on the same IPs we've been playing for the past two decades. It simply isn't viable any longer as is evidenced by the sorry state of the Wii U.

Look, I love Nintendo developed games. However, I'm not buying an entire console to only play games from one developer. I wouldn't do for Rockstar or Blizzard or Valve or any other developer and I'm not going to do it for Nintendo. Furthermore, I think it's more than safe to say that I am far from alone in this. I wager there are tons of people who feel the exact same way in that they'd LOVE to be able to play the newest Mario game but aren't willing an entire new console to do so.

With the exception of the Wii, which caught on with the casual market that has now migrated to mobile gaming, Nintendo consoles haven been floundering since the N64. Nintendo at this point does two things well. They make good games and they make a good portable system. It's time they focused on those two things and give up on developing hardware for a home console market that has passed them by. Instead they should be putting their games out there on hardware that is with the times and has actual third party support to sell it and doesn't treat on line features as an afterthought. That is how they can turn things around. Until then it's going to be the same thing we've seen over and over and over for the past decade plus.

First off, Nintendo was screwed over by the same third party developers during the first year of the Wii U. Now, you can call it karma for the way Nintendo treated third party until the N64, but western third party made promises than ran off laughing. Secondly...you do know that the N64 and the Gamecube were on the high end of power for their generation, right? The Gamecube was the strongest console of that generation (seriously, look at Super Mario Sunshine's water graphics and let me know if there is anything that tops it today)...it was dead last. In fact, it is usually the weakest console that is the strongest in sales. And the strongest console usually places dead last. The only exception was the PS4 this yeah and that only happened at the tail end of this generation where it tied with the Xbox 360. Developers left Nintendo due to the draconian laws placed before them. Many developers jumped ship to Sony because they were offered a better deal, a deal that most of them have been happy to keep.

Furthermore, you do realize that only Mario and Zelda would survive a switch to third party. Nintendo relies on the huge successes on its largest titles to fund its lesser known products. No more Fire Emblem, No more Star Fox, No more Metriod. Heck, no more Bayonetta 2, X, and Wonderful 101 because they would no longer have the money to fund these projects. In fact, are you complaining about the over saturation of Mario games? Expect more releases in third party because that would be the only way for it to survive. Sega has shown us what happens when a developer goes third party, it goes kaput. Only recently last gen has it finally started to recover somewhat.

Now, is the Wii U doing poorly? Of course it is. No one is denying that. But giving up now would do more to harm the company. This isn't the Virtua Boy, where there were so few sales that dropping it was completely applicable. Screwing the current Wii U owners will have disastrous consequences PR wise.

 

[Baresark]

2010: Zynga Money Machine Leaves EA Behind - The Escapist

2013: Zynga Q2 Financials: Profits Crater, Active Users Melt Away | The Escapist

2014: Candy Crush Saga's Q1 2014 Profits Crush Nintendo

2016: [fill in the blank]

This was my exact thought. Other might mobile publishers have come along and they rapidly expand and sell stock... then they tank because you can't make money off of a single game forever.

 

[water_bearer]

Who cares?!

Mario Kart 8 is out!!!

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

Who cares?!

Mario Kart 8 is out!!!

Indeed; in fact, why the HELL did anyone bring up Nintendo in the first place? That seems outta left field, all things considered. I can understand needing to bring up something for sake of comparison, but there are other, far BETTER targets. It's like every time positive news happens with Nintendo somebody needs to do something negative lest Nintendo get really successful and gaming be forced to become more DIVERSE.

 

[Lunar Templar]

Who cares?!

Mario Kart 8 is out!!!

This :3

also, it's not hard to beat a company when your game is designed from the ground up to rip people off who don't know better.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

jeez, as much as I enjoy a good nintendo bashing (wiiU specifically) with their old traditional ways, this is a really odd correlation and seems out of left field that the connection was even made.

What purpose did this article servel beyond showing some obvious bias? Hell if you had at least linked the new mario kart in there somehow I might've understood due to that being recent, but this is just obvious clickbait.

 

[NiPah]

Indeed; in fact, why the HELL did anyone bring up Nintendo in the first place? That seems outta left field, all things considered. I can understand needing to bring up something for sake of comparison, but there are other, far BETTER targets. It's like every time positive news happens with Nintendo somebody needs to do something negative lest Nintendo get really successful and gaming be forced to become more DIVERSE.

Because it was an interesting snippet that a single game made more revenue then the entire library of Nintendo games combined in Q1 of 2014.

Also The Excapist did a ton of News Articles on Mario Kart 8, and a video review, and it scored a 4.5/5.

Is it really such a sin to post news about Nintendo that may be negative? This article isn't a lie, its completely factual, but instead of arguing the actual points of the article (aka how King got those numbers) they instead try to brush the article under the rug all while belittling and insulting both the author and this website.

But honestly no one takes the Nintendo diehards seriously on this forum, they've been a source of comical entertainment ever since Yahtzee reviewed his first Nintendo game.

 

[JarinArenos]

Meaningless comparison. My left buttcheek made more money than Nintendo did last year.

 

[xaszatm]

Indeed; in fact, why the HELL did anyone bring up Nintendo in the first place? That seems outta left field, all things considered. I can understand needing to bring up something for sake of comparison, but there are other, far BETTER targets. It's like every time positive news happens with Nintendo somebody needs to do something negative lest Nintendo get really successful and gaming be forced to become more DIVERSE.

Because it was an interesting snippet that a single game made more revenue then the entire library of Nintendo games combined in Q1 of 2014.

Also The Excapist did a ton of News Articles on Mario Kart 8, and a video review, and it scored a 4.5/5.

Is it really such a sin to post news about Nintendo that may be negative? This article isn't a lie, its completely factual, but instead of arguing the actual points of the article (aka how King got those numbers) they instead try to brush the article under the rug all while belittling and insulting both the author and this website.

But honestly no one takes the Nintendo diehards seriously on this forum, they've been a source of comical entertainment ever since Yahtzee reviewed his first Nintendo game.

You must certainly be the delight of parties. You attack the one person who doesn't go out of there way to point out how little something like this matters in the long run and say that that represents everyone.

Furthermore, what News Articles on Mario Kart 8? I think there was the review, and the bundle message. Was there more?