Supercell made a profit of $810 million last year on revenue of just over $2 billion in 2017. These numbers are staggering, and yet shockingly, they are even lower than in 2016, when the company made $2.3 billion in revenue and over $1 billion in earnings. This is despite Supercell not releasing a new game globally in 2017, though Brawl Stars entered its Canadian beta in June and remains a limited release. According to Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen:
Our headline numbers for the year are not as high as last year, as we did not release a new game globally. Our vision is to create games for as many people as possible that are played for years and remembered forever. That is obviously an insanely high bar to reach, and I?m proud that our teams don?t compromise on that and only release games that are the very best for our players. This is how we continue to build Supercell for the long term.
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In case you're wondering why games-as-a-service, and the mobile market in particular, are such important business targets in the gaming industry, this is why. Supercell has 241 employees, and didn't even release a new game in 2017. It's not unheard of for over a thousand employees to work on a single AAA console title, but on mobile, it's possible for a small team to support an entire group of titles!
However, while it's quite apparent that Supercell can wait around and keep updating their existing titles while continuing to make money hand ...