Three months ago I wrote about Focus Home Interactive (EPA:ALFOC) and the fact that, thanks to Vampyr, the first quarter was a very successful period for the French publisher. It seems that this has also continued into the second quarter, making H1 2018/19 a very successful period for the company.
So successful, that the first half of the financial year has generated record revenues for Focus Home Interactive. The H2 financial report states that revenues for the six months ending September 2018 have seen a 33% year-on-year increase of last year, bringing in €44.3 million in total. This has been driven, again, by Vampyr, as well as a host of back-catalogue sales.
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Focus Home Interactive – The Benefits of Digital and Back Catalogues
One of the major advantages for the publisher is a wealth of property that sells well, specifically when promoted correctly. In Q1, the company saw that 29% of revenue was made up of back catalogue sales, specifically noted were MudRunner and Farming Simulator. This has increased to a large degree when looking at the first half in total.
Back catalogue sales have seen a YoY increase of €11.1m, with 45% of total sales coming from these back catalogue titles, making it just short of €20m revenue from these titles. This is a stable figure, as the same period last year, the percentage of back catalogue sales accounted for 44% of revenue.
Related Focus Home Interactive Posts Big Q1 – Pushed by Vampyr
A large number of these sales have been attributed to “FOCUS Publisher Weeks” in which their titles are placed on deep discounts on both Steam and the Windows store, and heavily promoted by both Valve and Microsoft. Specifically, the publisher states that this enabled “the Group to sell hundreds of thousands of copies of its games”.
As these are digital events, you can assume that this accounted for a large percentage of the revenue. You would be correct with this assumption. Digital sales accounted for 65% of revenue with the breakdown by border being even larger. Only 10% of revenue was generated in Focus Home Interactive’s home nation of France, the same percentage as revealed in Q1.
Q3 H2: A New Direction and Bursting at the Seams
Focus Home Interactive has made some changes in management to guide the company further intro the future. John Bert, formerly the Business Director, has now been named as the COO of the company. He has been attributed as the guiding force behind the companies moves internationally and digitally. A further three changes have also been made. Vincent Chataignier takes up the position of John Bert, with Aurélie Rodrigues moving to be sales director and a move up for Dessil Basmadjian, formerly the head of video, to creative director.
Of course, all of the management changes in the world wouldn’t matter if the company had no games coming, and this is an area in which they are, to use simple terminology, stacked. First and foremost, Vampyr will be making another splash as it has now been announced for the Nintendo Switch. Although a date hasn’t been set, it’s huge news for the company. In addition to the upcoming Switch release of Vampyr, the company has a number of titles in the work as well as a few that have been recently released.
Recently, the company released the fourth episode of The Council on the 25th of September. In addition to this, Space Hulk: Tactics was released on the 9th of October and The American Wilds expansion to MudRunner at the start of this week. In just four days Call of Cthulu will be launched, a game that our very own Rosh Kelly previewed and believes is one to keep your eye on. Farming Simulator 19, an ever-popular series in Europe, is scheduled to launch on November 20th. Topping this off is Insurgency Sandstorm, scheduled to release on the 12th of December.
Further afield, Focus Home Interactive has a wealth of titles to look forward to. These include The Surge 2, A Plague Tale: Innocence, Greedfall, Necromunda: Underhive Wars and Werewolf: The Apocalypse. There’s always a chance that one or more of these titles will feature in Q4 for the company.
By all accounts, this is set to be by and far Focus Home Interactives best year, both critically and financially. From the unmitigated success that was Vampyr, to upcoming titles that seem to be above and beyond the quality the publisher was putting out even 5 years ago, it’s a huge step forward. Vampyr has the potential to be just the tip of the iceberg that is Focus Home Interactive and their future potential.
