Embracer Group has been on a spending spree over the last few years, acquiring developers left, right, and center to create their own gaming empire. The result is they now own 113 studios, and between them they have 150 games in development according to the company’s latest financial report. Of those projects, more than 70 are premium games.
Those 70 games are all expected to be completed during the next financial year (between April 2021 and the end of March 2022), although most of them will release towards the latter end. Embracer expects the games to bring in around SEK 2,500-3,000 million ($300-$361 million). None of these figures include games that may potentially be in development by the company’s latest acquisitions Gearbox, Aspyr Media, and EasyBrain, as these deals are still being finalized.
We already know several of those titles are in development at THQ Nordic’s collection of studios. Monster Jam Steel Titans 2 is due to be released on March 2, while Biomutant will finally hit consoles on May 25. There’s also Monster Energy Supercross 4 and MotoGp 21 from Milestone, Evil Dead The Game from Saber Interactive, and Dead Island 2 from Deep Silver, amongst others. There’s also something from Saints Row coming up soon, possibly the rumored Saints Row V.
Embracer also explained why some of these titles have been delayed into the next financial year:
Our quality first approach means that we give the developers the required time or resources to release a quality product. Over time, we believe this approach in general makes the most sense for all stakeholders – the fans and gamers, developers and employees, our business partners and the shareholders. On May 25, long-awaited Biomutant from our internal studio Experiment 101 will be released by THQ Nordic on multiple platforms. We are well aware that it has been quite a delay, but we are confident that it has been delayed for the right reasons. To give some idea of our processes, during the current year we have decided to move more than ten releases into the next financial year, mainly due to our quality first approach.
Embracer had a fairly good quarter net sales increasing by 44% to the value of SEK 2,168.1 million ($260.8 million). Not all of that is from gaming, but that section of their business still contributed the majority of those sales with SEK 1,355.6 million ($160.7 million). Their must profitable company was Deep Silver, followed by THQ Nordic, Saber Interactive, Coffee Stain, and DECA Games. The back catalogue from these studios helped strengthen their sales with franchises like Saints Row, Metro Redux, Wreckfest, World War Z, Snow Runner and Spongebob Squarepants all making significant contributions.
Finally, Tarsier Studios is enjoying the positive feedback from their most recent release, Little Nightmares II. The problem is this title brings in very little revenue for Embracer because the IP is owned by publisher Bandai Namco. The company noted that from now on, Tarsier will concentrate on developing new IPs for them. What this means for the future of Little Nightmares remains to be seen.
