Nexon has announced its financial results for the second quarter ended June 30th 2021.
Revenues were down 21 per cent year-on-year to $510 million (¥56 billion), while net income was $81 million (¥9 billion), in part to downward fluctuations in the price of Bitcoin. Nexon bought $100 million worth of Bitcoin in April 2021.
South Korea accounted for 58 per cent of revenues. Overall sales in the country were flat as lower-than-expected sales from MapleStory were balanced by the strong performance of The Kingdom of the Winds: Yeon.
Sales in China (which accounted for 24 per cent of total revenue), North America and Europe (eight per cent) and Japan (four per cent) were all down. However, MapleStory and MapleStory M did better than expected in the rest of the world.
Overall, Nexon generated 68 per cent of its revenues from PC and 32 per cent from mobile games.
Big days coming
In order to combat this decline, Nexon has announced several new initiatives. Veteran studio leader Myeong-jin Yun has returned to take responsibility for the global oversight of one of Nexon’s most popular PC games Dungeon & Fighter. On top of this, Nexon has also appointed Nick van Dyk as its chief strategy officer responsible for global strategic planning, M&A, corporate development and partnerships.
It has also announced 12 new games, which range from high profile releases like KartRider: Drift to more experimental games that Nexon says will be “developed quickly with player input”. The much anticipated debut PC game from ex-EA veteran Patrick Söderlund’s Embark Studios is preparing for a public beta soon too.
“Nexon creative teams are improving existing games and polishing new titles for release on multiple platforms in multiple markets,” said Nexon president and CEO Owen Mahoney.
“Our strategy includes new games in our development pipeline and bold initiatives to unlock the enormous untapped value in our global IP. If successful, any one of these projects has the potential to dramatically change Nexon’s trajectory and bring step-function improvements to our long-term revenue and profitability.”
We recently spoke to Nexon about how it adapted KartRider Rush Plus for mobile devices.
