The second quarter for fiscal year 2024 has ended up being a pretty awful one for Kakao Games. The latest earnings summary confirms that the publisher and developer was hit with a massive drop in operating profit, falling by just over 89 percent to 2.8B won ($2.03M), while revenue also fell by 13 percent, even as PC gaming revenue rose by 36 percent from the same time last year.
The report rests blame on a lack of new games and a drop in long-term subscribers for its existing games for the flagging numbers, while the PC gaming portion of its business was mostly propped up by PUBG. As a result, Kakao is doubling its efforts to get new titles pushed forward, including plans for three new console game reveals at this year’s Gamescom and the projected early access release of Path of Exile 2 in Q4 of this year.
What’s also of note from this earnings call is another potential delay to ArcheAge 2: The report still has a projection of the MMORPG landing sometime in 2025 much like last year’s report, but during its earnings call, Kakao stated that the game could arrive sometime late 2025 or early 2026; we see on the earning release slides that it will arrive after Chrono Odyssey, which currently is projecting a launch sometime in the third quarter of 2025.
• Kakao Q3 2024: ArcheAge 2 aka ArcheAge Chronicles has been delayed yet again
• Kakao Q2 2024: Profits nosedive as ArcheAge 2 faces another potential delay
• Kakao Q1 2024: ArcheAge 2 and Chrono Odyssey are apparently back on track for 2025
• Kakao’s western version of ArcheAge is sunsetting in June
• Kakao Q4 2023: ArcheAge 2 has been delayed (again), now to some point in or after 2025
• Chrono Odyssey debuts a splashy new in-engine trailer and confirms Kakao Games as publisher
• Kakao is effectively sunsetting ArcheAge Unchained, merging it into two remaining western ArcheAge servers
• Kakao Games Q2 2023: ArcheAge 2 targets second half of 2024, Ares Rise of Guardians launches in Korea
• Kakao partially denies report that ArcheAge will sunset following XLGAMES restructure
• Kakao Q3 2022: Revenue down, pipeline packed with ArcheAge War, Ares, Odin Valhalla Rising, Dysterra
• Kakao and XLGAMES reconfirm that ArcheAge 2 is launching in 2024
• Kakao’s Project Ares is a new MMORPG called Ares: Rise of Guardians
• Kakao is taking over publishing ArcheAge in the west from Gamigo
• Kakao Q1 2021 financials: ArcheAge 2 won’t be ready until at least 2024
• Desert Oasis: A brief history of Kakao Games, Black Desert’s former PC publisher
• Kakao Games’ Q3 2020 investor report suggests late 2021 western launch for Elyon Ascent Infinite Realm
• MMO Business Roundup: Kakao’s controlling stake in XLGAMES, Steam’s new record, Xbox’s games-as-a-service