It's the end of the fiscal year for a lot of games publishers. We've already heard how Disney Interactive is discontinuing their Disney Infinity series and getting out of games publishing. More recently we got the full outlook of upcoming EA projects, including various new Star Wars titles. Now it's Take-Two's turn.
The parent company of 2K and Rockstar had its best year in a while financially, beating out their forecast for the third consecutive year. If you're into financial mumbo-jumbo, you'll love the super boring paragraph below detailing just how well they did.
The full-year numbers looked similar, with non-GAAP net revenues down 6 percent to $1.561 billion, but still above guidance that topped out at $1.53 billion. Non-GAAP earnings per share were $1.96 for the year, compared to the third quarter projection of $1.65 to $1.75, and far surpassing the company's initial fiscal year guidance of $0.75 to $1.
What all that means, simply, is that they're doing well and a massively contributing factor in that success has been digital sales. Virtual currency, DLC, and in-app purchases, collectively referred to as recurrent consumer spending, accounted for 37% of their net revenues. Digital content as a whole amassed over half — 54% — of those same revenues.
Microtransactions have been very kind to Take-Two.
With Battleborn having kicked off their FY 2017, the publisher is looking ahead to other AAA games slated for release soon. Mafia III, the recently announced PC exclusive Civilization VI, as well as this year's installments of NBA and WWE aim to stay the course for the company.
Maybe the most intriguing note of the earnings call came when they announced that Rockstar's in-house projects will be revealed "soon." More GTA V content is undoubtedly on the way in the form of free updates and events, but might we get full expansions to the story or multiplayer? And what of the constantly swirling Red Dead 2 rumors? The fact that they've taken this time to tease the word "soon" likely means announcements are coming within this fiscal year.
In please-be-related news, E3 is less than a month away.