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Changyou selling Wartune dev 7Road as it focuses on mobile future

Announced in FY15 Q1 financials

Changyou selling Wartune dev 7Road as it focuses on mobile future

Chinese online game publisher Changyou (NASDAQ:CYOU) has announced its unaudited FY15 Q1 financials, for the three months ending 31 March 2015.

Total revenues were $209 million, up 15 percent year-over-year but down 3 percent quarter-over-quarter.

Of this, online and mobile game revenues were $185 million, up 13 percent year-over-year and flat quarter-over-quarter.

Net income was $47 million, compared to net losses a year ago and in the previous quarter.

Changyou ended the quarter with net cash of $465 million.

New road

"We are pleased that our Tian Long Ba Bu (TLBB) PC game has delivered another quarter of solid revenue and profitability, and we expect to see more PC game launches in the second half of the year, replacing some of our older games," said co-CEO Dewen Chen.

"Our focus now for mobile games is to bring out an abundant and diversified pipeline of new games, through in-house development and co-development."

Changyou recorded 900,000 paying mobile gamers on a quarterly aggregate basis.

In this context, Changyou announced that it would be selling some of its internal studios, notably Wartune developer 7Road, a browser game specialist, for up to $200 million.

The mobile version of Wartune was published outside of China by Kabam in 2014, but failed to find an audience. 

Monthly churns

The company's average number of monthly active online accounts was 4.9 million, down 25 percent year-on-year and down 29 percent quarter-on-quarter.

Changyou said this was partly down to ongoing efforts to shut down inauthentic accounts, as well as the maturing of older titles.

In comparison, the total number of monthly active mobile gamers was 4.4 million, up 69 percent year-on-year, but down 37 percent quarter-on-quarter.

Both changes were due to the successful launch of TLBB 3D - the mobile version of its popular PC game - in the previous quarter.

Changyou recorded 900,000 paying mobile gamers on a quarterly aggregate basis.

As with mobile player numbers, this was up 800 percent year-on-year and down 40 percent quarter-on-quarter.

[source: Changyou]


Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.