Category: International Issues with Social Games

Last week, GREE released its financials for the Q1 2013 fiscal year. GREE generated revenue of $466.7 million for the quarter, representing an annual run rate of over $1.8 billion. GREE also had a profit for the quarter of $111.5 million, which extrapolates to about $450 million in yearly profits. I am not a professional (or even amateur) stock analyst, so rather than predict—or try to predict—GREE’s future performance, I will highlight its impact on other social and mobile game companies.

The numbers showed GREE’s dependence upon the Japanese market. Unlike DeNA, which I wrote about a few weeks ago, GREE does not yet have a major success in North America (outside of the Funzio games it acquired). It does, however, have significant costs in its efforts to grow internationally. GREE’s cost of sales increased 123 percent year-over-year, which GREE attributed to its aggressive international expansion.

GREE’s financial results overall were not nearly as strong as DeNA’s but a much more positive sign for the industry than Zynga’s results. They reinforce you can generate high revenue (a $1.8 billion run rate in sales is not bad) and profitability by primarily selling virtual goods. They also show how one or two hits in a portfolio of over 50 games can move you from good to great (Rage of Bahamut probably accounts for most of the difference between DeNA and GREE) and are the difference between success and failure in global expansion. Next quarter, the results may be the inverse and probably would not make one company better than the other. Overall, though, it is great to see multiple social gaming companies with strong revenue and profitability.