Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel boosted Konami to its most profitable year ever
Between canceling Hideo Kojima’s Silent Hills project some years ago, digitally delisting Metal Gear games, and taking a stab at the NFT market, Konami is not in a favorable position in many gamers’ minds. Despite that, the company has managed to achieve its most profitable year to date in fiscal year 2022.
According to the financial highlights from its latest report, Konami brought in ¥299.5 billion, which equates to roughly $2.3 billion USD. Given the running joke about Konami shifting to pachinko machines and casinos, you might credit those products as the reason behind the record number. That’s not the case, however. The majority of that revenue — ¥215 billion — is categorized under “digital entertainment,” which is Konami’s video game department. Pachinko machines are classified as “amusement,” and casinos are under the “gaming and systems” banner. Those made ¥19.5 and ¥25.6, respectively. Even combined, that’s less than one-sixth of what Konami’s video games brought in.
Two big titles seem to be the driving forces behind these record numbers. The first is the latest Momotaro Dentetsu game, the newest entry in a long-running series of multiplayer board games about building trains and railways. The Japan-only game is massively popular, often beating out the likes of Animal Crossing: New Horizons and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in terms of Nintendo Switch sales.
Worldwide, Konami’s impressive numbers seem to owe a lot to Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Master. Fiscal year 2022 runs from July 1, 2021 through April 1, 2022, yet Duel Master only began rolling out in January of this year. In the relatively short time since, the virtual card game reached 30 million downloads, and 10 million of those came within the first
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