CAVE's 2008 fiscal year report

[EOJ]

CAVE released their fiscal report for the period from May2007-May2008 on July 14th:

http://www.cave.co.jp/ir/archives/ir/pdf/2008/ir080714.pdf

A few interesting points:

-Among their 4 divisions (Information provider, game development, commerce, and online) the game development had the lowest sales and profit. Total sales from their games was 296,000,000 yen ($2.7mil USD), while the profit was 152,000,000 yen ($1.4mil USD).
-They are aiming to increase the gross sales from game development in both 2009 and 2010. The aim for 2009 is 400,000,000 yen, while it is 600,000,000 yen for 2010. So it's clear that for at least the next 2 years, there will not be any shortage of arcade games from them.
-They mention that in addition to continuing to develop arcade shooting and medal games, they are also developing arcade games using touch screen technology.
-Their games division will also continue developing online games for home users, but that's all they have planned for home gamers. There are no plans to do any more DS development (Ohimesama must have been a flop), and as usual, no plans for any ports of their arcade games.
-They say that in addition to developing arcade games, they also plan to expand their earnings from selling machines (= PCBs?) direct. Could this mean no more AMI?

[adverse]

Very nice summary, thanks for this.  Must've been a lot of business Japanese to suffer through.

-Among their 4 divisions (Information provider, game development, commerce, and online) the game development had the lowest sales and profit. Total sales from their games was 296,000,000 yen ($2.7mil USD), while the profit was 152,000,000 yen ($1.4mil USD).

This doesn't surprise me much but do they include the money made on all the shwag they sell?  I guess some of that is in commerce.  Seems like they could make a lot more money if they didn't surrender this market to Yahoo auctions and just sold at the quantities their maniac fans actually demand.

Would've been nice to read something from them about the Ketsui and DDPBL ports...I guess they'll be getting a slice of whatever sales result from the 360 versions.l

[GaijinPunch]

I'm wondering if their profits include money they've shelled out in salaries.  2.7 mil - 1.4 mil = 1.3 million in cost, and that's not all labor.  Of course I don't know the staff numbers, but that doesn't seem like a lot of dough to spend a year in salaries.  I wonder what IKD makes.

[EOJ]

Would've been nice to read something from them about the Ketsui and DDPBL ports...I guess they'll be getting a slice of whatever sales result from the 360 versions.l

I think they just sold the licenses for a flat fee, doubt there will be any thing in the way of royalties (the games will be lucky to break 5000 copies anyway). They didn't mention the ports as they don't really have anything to do with them.

@GP: They probably just have to fund the salaries of the 4 main programmers (Yagawa, Inoue, IKD, and Ichimura), the rest of the guys are mainly freelance, right? Of course they have to pay them too, but it must vary from project to project. Could always take some of the profits from another part of CAVE (like their internet provider services division).

[EOJ]

Also worth mentioning: CAVE's stock has risen significantly for the first time in a year since the release of DDP:DFK.

[GaijinPunch]

Inoue is definitely freelance.  Others that come to mind are Akira Wakabayashi (he's credited in most Cave games) as well as Satoshi Kouyama (who has been around forever).  These, amongst others, are definitely full time employees. 

[EOJ]

CAVE is a "hot stock" according to Reuters:

http://jp.reuters.com/article/stocksNews/idJPnTK015314520080827

They say it's forecast to rise by May 2009, and it would be good to buy now. They cite favorable projections for its online business as a key reason.