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Boasting 120 million lifetime downloads, the free-to-play boom lifts Gamevil's Q1 FY12 sales 160% to $14.7 million

91% of business from in-app purchases

Boasting 120 million lifetime downloads, the free-to-play boom lifts Gamevil's Q1 FY12 sales 160% to $14.7 million
South Korean publisher Gamevil (KDQ:063080) has announced its Q1 FY12 figures for the 3 months ending 31 March 2012.

Sales were 16.6 billion KRW (around $14.7 million), up 160 percent year-on-year.

Operating profit was up 131 percent to 6.2 billion KRW (around $5.5 million).

Net profit was up 105 percent to 5.2 billion KRW (around $4.6 million).

The company also announced that it's hit a cumulative total of 120 million downloads.

No barrier to entry

The reason backing such success is that Gamevil's revenue is now almost all generated from its free-to-play smartphone games.

For the quarter, 91 percent of revenue came from in-app purchases, while 92 percent came from iOS and Android products.

The company is positioning itself as more of a publisher too, with 40 titles to be released in 2012; 16 titles in the second half of 2012. Of these, five will be internally developed, and 11 from independent developers.

In this way Gamevil is combining the foundation of its key, regular titles such as Zenonia and Baseball Superstars, with third party-developed successes such as Air Penguin and Cartoon Wars.

It bought the latter as an IP deal in late 2011.

Comes with friends

"Publishing third party titles has allowed Gamevil to explore a wide variety of genres and has continuously contributed to the financial growth of the company." stated CFO Yong Kuk Lee.

"Now that publishing titles on Apple's App Store and Google Play has been gaining momentum this past quarter, we are very pleased to see strong growth throughout global markets."

[source: Gamevil]
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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.