Activision reports record full year revenues, expects to top $1 billion in 2005
Publisher Activision has announced that its net revenues for the year ended March 31st rose by some 10 per cent year on year, marking a record high for the company - which now expects to break the $1 billion mark in fiscal 2005.
Publisher Activision has announced that its net revenues for the year ended March 31st rose by some 10 per cent year on year, marking a record high for the company - which now expects to break the $1 billion mark in fiscal 2005.
Full year revenues stood at $947.7 million, which is even higher than the company's own projections - dismissed as over-optimistic by some commentators - while net income rose to $77.7 million from last year's $66.2 million figure.
In the coming year, Activision expects to continue its success, with a strong line up of titles including a sequel to Tony Hawks Underground, new games in the True Crime and Call of Duty franchises, a tie-in title for the forthcoming Spiderman 2 movie, and id Software's long-awaited Doom III - which is tentatively pencilled in for a September launch.
Like many other publishers, Activision has been moving its operations towards focusing on a small number of key titles rather than the more scattergun approach to publishing which characterised the industry only a few years ago.
It sees franchises such as True Crime and Call of Duty as being key to this approach, and expects sequels based on those titles to provide "predictable revenue streams for years to come," according to CEO Bobby Kotick.
Spiderman 2 is also a very important title for the coming year; the company actually expects sales of the new game to exceed those of its predecessor, itself no commercial slouch with sales of over three million units.
The company's projections for the coming year foresee it passing a very significant fiscal milestone, with revenues hitting $1.05 billion - granting Activision entry into the extremely exclusive club of Western game publishers with turnover of over $1 billion, alongside rivals Take Two (currently projecting about $1.2 billion for the full year to October 31st) and EA (which next year ought to top $3 billion in revenue).
Unsurprisingly, the publisher also added its name to the growing list of companies supporting both the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP - with one title on each platform planned before the end of fiscal 2005 next March.