Hearts of Iron 4 Renaissance; Paradox Bets on In-house Studios
We got to know the new financial results of Paradox Interactive. We also learned that HoI4 is experiencing a renaissance.
- Last quarter was one of the worst in Paradox's history;
- The reasons for the poor financial results included the cancelation of a number of projects;
- The good news is Hearts of Iron 4 is experiencing a golden age;
- In the future, Paradox will focus more on in-house games, and limit investment in third-party teams.
Paradox Interactive has released its financial report for the third quarter of this year. It was not a good period for the company. Profits were the lowest in the publisher's history, and revenues were the worst in two years.
However, there was also some good information in the report. First of all, the renaissance of Hearts of Iron IV. In the past quarter HoI4 was played by twice as many players as after the release in 2016. Two months ago, the game managed to set a new activity record on Steam - 49,724 people.
In addition, the good news is that games that are already released are not responsible for the low profits and revenues in the past quarter. The main reasons were the delayed releases and, most importantly cancelation of a number of projects in development. This decision was made by Frederik Wester, who recently returned to the chair of CEO. He announced Paradox Interactive's return to its roots, and there was a bit of information in the financial report about what that would mean.
The company is going to cut back on funding third-party developer projects. The publisher will focus on games created by its own studios, which from now on can expect more resources and support.
The report also confirms that Paradox Interactive currently has fifteen titles in the pipeline. Only four of these have been revealed. Some are sequels, but there is also no shortage of new IPs. Included in those fifteen are console ports (such as the Crusader Kings III port currently for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S), but not DLCs.
