Canadian mobile developer East Side Games has seen revenue dip by 32%, down to $24.3m in their latest financial results.
The studio's Q1 2023 results show that DAU was stable since Q4 2022, at 277,000, while ARPDAU had dipped from $1.04 to $0.95 quarter-on-quarter. The company has also announced their intention to buy back up to 4,076,819 shares, suggesting that there may be a period of greater strategic direction in the company ahead.
East Side Games was of course quick to point out two major releases this year, Milk Farm: Tycoon and Doctor Who: Lost in Time which should offer growth potential in the near future.
CEO of ESGG, Jason Bailey, commented, “Munchie Match continues to post the most impressive retention numbers of any LDRLY title with Day One retention rates over 50% and Day Seven retention over 25%. Event-driven LiveOps are being added to the game with a regular cadence and we expect the game to be ready for a large marketing push by mid Q3. This title gives us a firm place of success to build on in the Match 3 genre. We already have partnerships with world class IPs that will see titles built on this GameKit framework.”
A cloudy month for mobile?
While the likes of EA and Take-Two have weathered the recent storms, given the recent poor performance of Playtika's financials, as well as NCSoft's drop in stock price and its own report, it seems clear that this year is seeing some harsh performance for mobile makers. However, it's worth noting that this isn't a total loss, as some others such as Applovin are seeing rises, although mainly driven by their non-mobile business. It would appear that the post-Covid hangover, macroeconomic circumstances and indeed, changes in the tastes of players when it comes to genre are all impacting revenue.
