Historic Japanese studio leads industry sales in 2010
Nintendo has landed first place in the list of the world’s most lucrative game studios, published in the 2010 Develop 100.
The last time Nintendo reclaimed the top spot was in 2008, having finished in second last year behind Blizzard Entertainment. The Kyoto-based studio also took second place back in 2007, falling just behind FIFA studio EA Canada.
This year Nintendo made its rise to the top an emphatic one, taking a whopping £203.63 million in UK sales across 2009. That sum amounts to nearly half of the combined sales of all Japanese studios featuring in the top 100.
The second placed studio, troubled US outfit Infinity Ward, pulled in £125.58 million – enough for first place in many years past, but today not close enough to match Nintendo.
In fact, Nintendo’s £203.63 million had single-handedly matched the entire combined sales of every UK studio in the Develop 100.
Of the five major Nintendo titles that contributed to the impressive result, Wii Fit took the largest sum, at £47.34m. The rest was split between Wii Sports Resort, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Mario Kart Wii and Wii Fit Plus, which all made between £20 - £30m.
Despite these encouraging results, the company hit upon a rocky spell in fiscal 2010, reporting losses of 18 per cent internationally.
Considering the huge lead the firm still has on all of their nearest competitors, however, it seems unlikely that they will be making any sweeping reforms to their business model in the near-future.
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I wonder how seriously you can take these rankings? Where is Zynga for example? Where is Jagex?
Well, we take the list very seriously - we publish it after all ;)
Plus it is widely read in the games industry - and has been for six years now. So people do take it very seriously. (And I could prove it further with the complaints from people who feel they have been left out this year, even though their games didn't sell enough, etc...)
But the lack of digital sales is a weakness in a list based on boxed product data, yes - we admit this on the first page of the book. However last year we formulated a list that took all that into account and the industry wasn't particularly satisfied.
For now, retail is still the predominant force for buying games. A massive majority of games are bought on disc - and these are the high ticket games generating the highest revenue. Yes, if we included Blizzard, Zynga, Jagex etc they would feature highly - but we need that data first. And these firms just don't share all of that data consistently, for good reasons of their own.
For now - and in the short to medium term at least - the Develop 100 is still the best way to see which studios make the most cash.
Michael, correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that a way of judging the best selling games, or what company made the most profit? Both of which we can find on our own.
In my opinion that doesn't mean they are the best studios. You should take into account quality of the content, reinvestment back into the content for consumers and overall game changing hardware/software/innovative developments.
This is just my opinion though and at the end of the day, with any top 10, people will be shocked and people will have their own opinions. But you have just discussed your method of deciding who are the best and I think many will agree that it doesn't quite reflect the title of the top 10 correctly. Maybe you could break it down into several different catagories and then the studio with the highest score based on that can be crowned king
