One of the best VR studios reports record growth
The game developer Resolution Games multiplied its sales last year. This is a good sign for the VR industry.
The Swedish studio was founded in Stockholm in 2015 and has since produced more than a dozen VR and AR games, including hits like Blaston (review) and Demeo (review). The latter is one of the 25 most successful premium games for Meta Quest, judging by the number of reviews in the Oculus Store.
Resolution Games specializes in multiplayer titles with a live service character: Blaston and Demeo have been continuously developed since their release and are regularly updated with new free content. With its games, the studio wants to create social microcosms, so-called Tinyverses, in which company founder Tommy Palm sees building blocks of the Metaverse.
Resolution Games posts record profit last year
2021 was the fifth profitable year in a row for Resolution Games. That's not a given for the struggling VR games industry. The studio saw a quadrupling of B2C revenue and a tripling of game downloads across all platforms in 2021.
The company reinvested the majority of profits into its team. At the end of 2021, Resolution Games had 108 employees (up 55 percent year-over-year). Currently, there are 158 and by the end of the year, the number of employees is expected to increase to over 200.
The latest round of investment, which brought $25 million into the studio's coffers last July, should help. In total, Resolution Games has received $38.5 million so far - a rarity for studios specializing in VR and AR gaming.
The next challenge: augmented reality
The studio also announced a second office in Austin, Texas, and the acquisition of Stockholm-based VR studio Zenz VR. The studio's developers will help with ongoing projects and strengthen the studio's new AR division, which will develop experiences for upcoming AR and MR headsets.
"As an early leader in VR games, we've had the opportunity to learn what works best for immersive play and what doesn't," said Tommy Palm, founder and CEO of Resolution Games. "This experience puts us in a unique position to apply these learnings as we explore the next generation of technologies, including mixed and augmented reality. With VR headset sales seeming to double every year, and the rise of next-gen AR and MR at the doorstep, we find ourselves firmly planted in an era where the early movers will help to define what the next generation of play will be."
New content for Demeo is planned for 2022, as well as the launch of an entirely new title, the competitive arena game Ultimechs. It launches "on major VR platforms" later in 2022.
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