Tokyo-based social games and mobile entertainment company DeNA today announced their results from the past fiscal year, and they beat all estimates. These record breaking fiscal fourth quarter results, with an 81% year-over-year increase to $205 million, make it one of the largest social gaming companies in the world.
DeNA’s continued emphasis on internally developed social games during the previous year has yielded great results, reinforcing their leading position in Japan as the premiere social and mobile gaming company. “Our expansion into social networking games during the third quarter reaped significant gains which made these record breaking fourth quarter and annual results possible, ” says DeNA CEO Tomoko Namba. DeNA reported seeing a “significant increase in page views and game sales” for its released titles like Pirate Treasure, Hoshitsuku, and Kaito Royale.
Earlier this week, DeNA announced a partnership with Yahoo! Japan and is looking to leverage Yahoo! Japan’s dominant portal posit to extend its business models beyond the mobile-gaming frontier to a PC-based social gaming platform. The synergy could prove fruitful for both parties as DeNA brings to the table unique development and social gaming operational knowledge that could help rapidly expand the PC-based social gaming user-base.
Plans to develop social games for Facebook and other platforms will parallel its efforts to establish a significant American presence such as their recent office opening in San Mateo, California in January of 2008. “As we enter the fiscal year of 2010, we remain bullish on the growth of social gaming in Japan, ” says Tomoko Namba. With strong moves such as investments in startups such as Aurora Feint, DeNA will aspire towards continuous fiscal growths and will be a player we will be all watching closely, especially Zynga.
