Korean publisher and developer Krafton announced its financial results for the third quarter of calendar year 2024.
The financial documents reveal that revenue was 719.3 billion Won, up 59.7% year-on-year.
Of that, PC revenue was 274.3 billion won, up 126.1% year-on-year. Mobile revenue was 425.4 billion won, up 37.6% year-on-year. Console revenue was only 11.8 billion won, down 1.7% year-on-year.
Operating profit was 324.4 billion won, up 71.4% year-on-year.
We hear from Krafton CFO DK Bae, who boasted growth for the PUBG IP and the implementation of AI technology.
“Various services based on the PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS IP are showing remarkable growth in all areas, including sales and traffic. The AI technology that we have developed through continuous investment and research has entered the implementation stage and is ready to have a full-scale roll out through various services, including inZOI.”
We hear that global traffic and profitability improved for the PUBG IP thanks to map updates, new game modes, and various collaborations.
Speaking of the PC and console versions of PUBG, the Lamborghini collaboration in July achieved the highest-ever sales for a single item.
The Taego map update combined with the new mode ‘Hungers Left Behind’ in September caused concurrent users to peak at 890,000, which is a new record since the game was shifted to free-to-play.
During the quarter Krafton has made five separate investments to “discover new IPs” including equity investments in studios, second-party publishing, and licensing deals. These include the mobile version of Palworld now in development at PUBG Studios and a new project in collaboration with the brand-new studio Day 4 Night.
If you’re curious about this project it was described as follows by Davide Soliani of Mario + Rabbids fame.
“What we are crafting at Day 4 Night is a reflection of everything I’ve ever wanted to experience as a player – joy, adventure, poetry, action, wonder, and the pleasure of working with friends, lullaby for my soul and a serenade to our industry, to the magic and the madness of creating worlds from nothing. It’s a story about triumphs, challenges, dreams, to light the path we walk together.”
Krafton is also investing in India and in AI, focusing on technologies like “natural language processing (NLP), vision & animation, speech recognition (STT/TTS), and reinforcement learning (RL).”
This year the company focused on applying these AI technologies to actual games, including inZOI with its “3D Printer” feature that lets you turn real-life objects into in-game objects from pictures. The game will also include a chatbot and motion generation technology via SLM.
In the long run, Krafton is also planning to create a “CPC” (Co-Playable Character) that can interact with users. The company plans to expand this technology to its games including PUBG and inZOI.
If you’re interested in financial results, other gaming companies have already announced their latest financial results, including Koei Tecmo, Capcom, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Microsoft, Konami, Marvelous, Nintendo, Bandai Namco, and Take-Two.
