Today Marvelous Entertainment shared its financial results for the first quarter of the fiscal year, related to the period between April 1 and June 30, 2021.
Unfortunately, sales were 5.319 billion yen and declined by 1.153 billion yen year-on-year. Operating income was 780 billion yen, almost halved year-on-year.
This is due to the unfavorable comparison with strong sales of Rune Factory 5, which did well in the same quarter in 2021.
Speaking of games launched in the quarter, we hear that the zombie game Deadcraft failed to meet its sales target.
On the other hand, Shinobi Master Senran Kagura New Link for mobile platforms celebrated its 4.5th anniversary in May. The newly-introduced playable characters were well received and revenue has grown year-on-year.
We also hear that the company still plans to release the new JRPG Loop8 in 2022. The game is coming for PS4, Switch, and Xbox One, and was announced at a Japanese Nintendo Direct in February. After that, we haven’t really heard much about it.
The company also announced its forecast for the current fiscal year, but also mentioned that several of the new games coming for both consoles and mobile this fiscal year (by March 2021) are new and original, so financial performance will fluctuate depending on how many turn out to be hits.
This is interesting, because it may mean that Marvelous may have more aces up its sleeve that we don’t yet know about, albeit the wording is, as usual, vague.