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Falcom Q1 Report for 2016

S

Se7enSword

Banned
So earlier today Falcom revealed their Q1 financial information.

2016Q1.jpg
Observations

As promised, I’m adding in some observations of these numbers.

Like I said in my first line, the report itself looks awful, and I’m sorry for that headline, since it seems very alarmist. However, when you look at the numbers from 2014/2015, you can see that this quarter last year had a massive jump of over 200% from the year before. So this seems like they’re stabling out again, in a sense. When looking at the numbers above, you can see that they are still posting a profit- so there is no loss in this picture at all.

As a result, though these numbers seem scary, it looks like Falcom is kind of holding stable still and coming back off of the massive sales high that was Sen no Kiseki II- remember this game broke their sales records, too, and they kept the pace going for quite a bit, it seems.

In the forecast, Falcom has seemingly predicted this trend, so it’s not out of the blue for them at this point. If they keep on track, then they should be close to their predicted numbers at the end of the year, which would put them a little higher over the 2015 EOY numbers.

Overall, it doesn’t look too bad, health-wise for the company. In fact, they seem to still be healthy, financially… this just proves that the Kiseki/Trails games are monster sellers in Japan. However, their stock has taken a hit for the lower numbers. As of close today they are sitting at 640 points, which is a 8.18% decrease from yesterday.
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While the report looks bad, there are lots of favourable points about it in the long-term. Falcom is still profitable and as mentioned by EH's observations, there is nothing be alarmed about. Also they greatly reduced their debt during this period too, which is a huge positive! GO FIGHT!

Many thanks to Endless History for translating and for posting an article about it!
 
the curse of Trails and all that

I'm just glad they are hanging in there, wish their games sold better and even more wish they still made PC games, but wishes aren't horses, unfortunately.
 
With both Ys VIII and Sen no Kiseki III at the horizon and presumably both releasing this same year, I don't think there's anything to worry about.
 
Quarterly figures compare vs last year equivalent. Falcon had no new game in Q4 2015 that equals the revenues Sen 2 delivered.

Gu4n said:
With both Ys VIII and Sen no Kiseki III at the horizon and presumably both releasing this same year, I don't think there's anything to worry about.
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I wonder if Ys VIII was delayed to this year to make up for the possibility that Sen III isn't 2016 financial... :p
 
I have theories at the moment. I wouldn't DARE write my speculation in that article because I don't think it's the place to have it. I don't like making my financial speculations too detailed in public because I like people keeping one foot to the ground and not getting their heads too far in the clouds of 'omg' and hype. I've been there too many times and I can't think logically on those things anymore. ;D

However, if I were to put some of the speculation I left out of this post in the public? I would say that if you wanted to try and invest in Falcom, now's the time to take advantage of it, because I think their stock is going to be all over the place this year, and it will be higher by the end of their fiscal year due to other things happening.

As such, my actual speculation is that this is a calm before the storm in some wild shenanigans from them. I made a prediction last year that Falcom has two potential routes to take with their stockholders announcements: "The Safe Route" and "The Gutsy Route."

I want to say that Falcom may be poising themselves to take the 'gutsy route.'

Disclaimer: I don't know this for sure. Please remember, this is all speculation, and it's why my observations section was just observations, and none of what I've said here. xD

Nightengale said:
I wonder if Ys VIII was delayed to this year to make up for the possibility that Sen III isn't 2016 financial... :p
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I think it's partly that, and I think there may have been some snags with Ys VIII that would have surprised them a bit. It is jumping to a new console, afterall. And they had snags going to the Vita for the first time with Celceta, too.
 
Nightengale said:
I wonder if Ys VIII was delayed to this year to make up for the possibility that Sen III isn't 2016 financial... :p
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What I suspect is that they ran into development problems with Ys VIII and pushed it back in order to solve those problems (rather than pushing out a game and fixed it through patches), making Tokyo Xanadu some kind of 'emergency project' to have something as their 2015 release. In a way, Tokyo Xanadu was a highly cost-efficient project as they recycled a lot of assets from Kiseki and the jumping mechanics could theoretically be re-used/further refined for Ys VIII.
 
However, their stock has taken a hit for the lower numbers. As of close today they are sitting at 640 points, which is a 8.18% decrease from yesterday.
Click to expand...

This probably has more to do with the BoJ recent bond/interest actions than the results themselves. Japanese stocks have been taking massive beating these past two days.
 
I don't 100% buy that Tokyo Xanadu was done that quickly, because they had it announced at the shareholders meeting a few months after TGS, which means that that Falcom didn't take long at all to realize that Ys VIII was in trouble.

I think they planned Tokyo Xanadu already, but kind of changed directions on how they were doing releases and so forth. I also personally think Tokyo Xanadu was being worked on as a way to test graphical systems to eventually fold them back into Sen III. Falcom's notoriously done this with various games in the Ys series, using them to experiment for something new later on.

And even then, we see some things from Ys start showing themselves in Kiseki. Look at the attack types in Sen, for example. Those absolutely came out of the Ys party system games. And Falcom's actually taking things from Kiseki to Ys in Ys VIII from what I hear, since it sounds like you can break an enemy's guard in Ys VIII and it becomes vulnerable to all attack types then. (Makes me think of the offbalance and link skills in Sen/Sen II.)

1st Course said:
This probably has more to do with the BoJ recent bond/interest actions than the results themselves. Japanese stocks have been taking massive beating these past two days.
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This has been a long-time thing, actually. Falcom's stock first took a big hit back in August 2015, and it's been in some weird state of decline since then, falling from about 1200 to its 640 today.

Tizoc said:
Ok but what do they say about the performance of their titles on steam?
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They don't really say much. They talk about licensing income overall being down by about 50%, but that could mean anything- especially due to the minimal Asia region releases that they had in comparison to Q1 2015.
 
Kresnik258 said:
I know it's not in the link, but I don't suppose we got any shipment figures for Tokyo Xanadu from this?
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Not overall, specifically. I do know this came up during the shareholders meeting:

Q8: Will there be a continuation of Tokyo Xanadu?
A8: The lowest possible quota for such a thing was 50,000 units sold, but three times that was sold. Please wait for a follow-up on this.
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I have a post with more details of the stockholder questions from the meeting in December here: http://www.esterior.net/2015/12/question-and-answers-from-the-2015-falcom-stockholders-meeting/

This to me says that Falcom didn't have a very high threshold for sales for Tokyo Xanadu and that it blew past what they were expecting.
 
Tizoc said:
Ok but what do they say about the performance of their titles on steam?
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Nothing because that would come down to XSeed. As long as Falcom doesn't do it themselves, Steam numbers are irrelevant for them and only show a potential they could reach.
 
GhostTrick said:
Nothing because that would come down to XSeed. As long as Falcom doesn't do it themselves, Steam numbers are irrelevant for them and only show a potential they could reach.
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not really irrelevant, it was posted as much in Trails FC OT by Tom (if I'm not mistaken), that Falcom is looking into how Trails SC will perform on steam.
 
GhostTrick said:
Nothing because that would come down to XSeed. As long as Falcom doesn't do it themselves, Steam numbers are irrelevant for them and only show a potential they could reach.
Click to expand...

Falcom will sometimes bring up numbers if they're exceptional. I've seen them do it on twitter before. And their EOY report for last year actually broke down licensing income by region.

(In thousand yen increments)
Japan: 2,039,879
Asia: 346,800
NA/EU: 155,496

More here: http://www.esterior.net/2015/11/end-of-year-2015-report-summary-the-new-ys-will-be-released-in-2016/
 
omgfloofy said:
Not overall, specifically. I do know this came up during the shareholders meeting:



I have a post with more details of the stockholder questions from the meeting in December here: http://www.esterior.net/2015/12/question-and-answers-from-the-2015-falcom-stockholders-meeting/

This to me says that Falcom didn't have a very high threshold for sales for Tokyo Xanadu and that it blew past what they were expecting.
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Tokyo xanadu released in asia as well right? Game may have exceed 200,000 shipped within a year of its release
 
Tizoc said:
Tokyo xanadu released in asia as well right? Game may have exceed 200,000 shipped within a year of its release
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Not an Asia localized version, like Sen and Sen II got. If it did, it just had an Asia version, like I see with many other games.
 
Something else to take into account with those numbers:

Trails in the Sky SC for both PSP (both in NA and EU) and Steam, as well as Trails of Cold Steel (both platforms, NA and EU) would not be included in those numbers.

All that actually came out during Falcom's 2015 FY for NA and EU was Gurumin. (As a note, Falcom's FY is Oct 1 ~ Sept 30.)

These numbers are basically reflecting sustained sales numbers, as well as Gurumin's Steam release, IIRC.
 
Arthea said:
depressing... I must say
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It's a start, assuming XSEED regains momentum. Xanadu Next releasing in summer at $14.99 + launch discount would be a good move for sales volume and presence.

Good to hear we're not seeing recent Trails numbers being reflected in their reports yet, since they would provide a boost.
 
It makes me sad seeing how little Tits SC sells :(. Amazing game. I hope we get more besides cold steel 1 and 2

I guess I s won't hold my breath. Do we already know if the next Ys is releasing in NA and EU ?
 
Jolkien said:
It makes me sad seeing how little Tits SC sells :(. Amazing game. I hope we get more besides cold steel 1 and 2
Click to expand...

omgfloofy said:
Trails in the Sky SC for both PSP (both in NA and EU) and Steam, as well as Trails of Cold Steel (both platforms, NA and EU) would not be included in those numbers.
Click to expand...

SC was released in October 2015, which means it's part of the 2016 fiscal year for Falcom. Falcom's FY runs from Oct 1 ~ Sept 30th. So 2015 FY would be Oct 1 2014 ~ Sept 30, 2015.

Jolkien said:
I guess I s won't hold my breath. Do we already know if the next Ys is releasing in NA and EU ?
Click to expand...

No clue yet. Tom has said that Falcom won't let them touch releases until they've come out in Japan yet.
 
Since their stuff has been localized for the West on PC, Falcom has quickly become one of my favorite developers. I even brought a Vita just to play their most recent games.

Arthea said:
depressing... I must say
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The masterpiece that is Ys VI can only sell so many units by itself.
 
Nuu said:
The masterpiece that is Ys VI can only sell so many units by itself.
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Yep. There's 5am kicking in again. I must've skimmed right past Ys VI's release date when looking over the calendar. xD

Thanks for the reminder!

I should probably crash out and just answer any other questions when I'm awake again.
 
omgfloofy said:
Something else to take into account with those numbers:

Trails in the Sky SC for both PSP (both in NA and EU) and Steam, as well as Trails of Cold Steel (both platforms, NA and EU) would not be included in those numbers.

All that actually came out during Falcom's 2015 FY for NA and EU was Gurumin. (As a note, Falcom's FY is Oct 1 ~ Sept 30.)

These numbers are basically reflecting sustained sales numbers, as well as Gurumin's Steam release, IIRC.
Click to expand...
On top of that, people should bear in mind this is, I assume, revenue from licensing fees. It's a good metric to show how much money Falcom ultimately makes from these overseas markets, but comparison like for like with domestic revenue (where they publish themselves) can be misleading.
 
omgfloofy said:
Yep. There's 5am kicking in again. I must've skimmed right past Ys VI's release date when looking over the calendar. xD

Thanks for the reminder!

I should probably crash out and just answer any other questions when I'm awake again.
Click to expand...

I was being factious to a point. Ys VI sold poorly compared to the other games on PC.

And rightfully so.
 
Nuu said:
The game's shit, even considering it was the first entry in the single player action focused style. Good thing they learned from it. Still glad we got a re-release of it though.
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Regardless of whether it's crap or awesome, Ys VI on Steam and GOG is a really good value deal, coming with an artbook that's otherwise difficult to get even in Japan + a few important game alterations/additions that make playing the game today more viable. I really wouldn't have started with Napishtim before the next two 3D Ys games had XSEED not implemented Catastrophe Mode! XSEED did their best (within budget and while juggling other games) to deliver this game better than ever. So to see its release fall down like this is depressing because it wasn't as simple as tidying up fan translations (Oath in Felghana and Origin). There's new work in this version of the game that Japanese fans could really appreciate, for that matter.

FWIW I really enjoyed my Ys VI run, even with its ups-and-downs, but I would have been just as grateful to XSEED even if the game didn't gel with me. The launch price was fully worth it, especially since previously folks were having trouble getting the version sold by Groupons a while back to run correctly.
 
Dragoon En Regalia said:
Regardless of whether it's crap or awesome, Ys VI on Steam and GOG is a really good value deal, coming with an artbook that's otherwise difficult to get even in Japan + a few important game alterations/additions that make playing the game today more viable. I really wouldn't have started with Napishtim before the next two 3D Ys games had XSEED not implemented Catastrophe Mode! XSEED did their best (within budget and while juggling other games) to deliver this game better than ever. So to see its release fall down like this is depressing because it wasn't as simple as tidying up fan translations (Oath in Felghana and Origin). There's new work in this version of the game that Japanese fans could really appreciate, for that matter.
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Great point. XSEED did everything possible to fix the game. So it definitely is sad in that manner.


Marow said:
Err, could you expand on this?
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Ys VI gameplay, especially combat and enemy design, lacks compared to the two games that followed it.
 
Nuu said:
The game's shit, even considering it was the first entry in the single player action focused style. Good thing they learned from it. Still glad we got a re-release of it though.
Click to expand...

"Shit" is an incredible amount of hyperbole. It's not as good as Oath or Origin, but it's still better than 7 and Celceta to me. And honestly, coming after Ys 5, Ys 6 was incredible to me when it came out.
 
Aeana said:
"Shit" is an incredible amount of hyperbole. It's not as good as Oath or Origin, but it's still better than 7 and Celceta to me. And honestly, coming after Ys 5, Ys 6 was incredible to me when it came out.
Click to expand...

It is hyperbole I admit. I think "inconsistent" would better describe it.
 
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