On February 7th, 2024, COLOPL, the parent company of MAGES., unveiled their Q1 2024 financial report to investors. The beginning of the report details an overview of the company’s financial results before proceeding to outline their future endeavours.
The results section of the report highlights that in Q1 2024, COLOPL had a net loss of 0.4 billion JPY. In terms of gross profit margin (-7.4%), this marks COLOPL’s worst financial quarter in the past decade. Since they started making reports publicly available online in 2013, the only other time they had ever taken a net loss in a single quarter was in Q1 2019. At the time, COLOPL conveyed their losses were a result of the company’s 10th anniversary celebrations.
CEO Miyamoto Takashi claims that Q1’s subpar results are in large part due having no new release in this period. This trend appears to be continuing in Q2 2024, at least on the console game side. MAGES. has not announced a console release for Q2.
Nevertheless, the future endeavours section of the report emphasizes their plans for fostering anticipation and excitement for Steins;Gate’s 15th anniversary in October 2024. MAGES.’s next upcoming releases are the five-in-one Steins;Gate 15th anniversary double pack and Steins;Gate Elite: Good Value Edition on April 11th, 2024. However, neither of these products contain new games or even new ports of pre-existing games. All five of these Steins;Gate games have been previously released on the Nintendo Switch. This may disappoint fans who perhaps wanted to see the original Steins;Gate or Variant Space Octet ported to the Nintendo Switch or other modern platforms. While the original Steins;Gate is available remastered in 1080p on Steam, Variant Space Octet has never seen a port or re-release. It remains a piece of abandonware. Nevertheless, these cheaper re-releases might make it easier and more accessible for newcomers to go through the Steins;Gate sub-series.
The report then proceeds to outline an overview of their game release plans beyond these two April releases. The most interesting thing of note is that they have ten console games in the pipeline (excluding contracted development projects). In COLOPL’s Q4 2023 financial report, they only listed five console games in the pipeline. Despite COLOPL’s worrying financial results and MAGES. not having a single console release for either Q1 2024 or Q2 2024, it seems they nonetheless still have ten games in the pipeline.
Fans may speculate as to what these ten games may be. Two of these would be the Steins;Gate re-releases in April. Another two of these would be the previously announced Memories Off Sousou and Corpse Party II; MAGES.’ website still lists both for release in 2024. However, that still leaves six more games unaccounted for. MAGES. director Asada Makoto previously teased a new Steins;Gate game and long-awaited sequel to celebrate Steins;Gate’s 15th anniversary (which is very likely the previously-announced Steins;???). Back in 2020, MAGES. also announced Steins;Gate 0 Elite, which has received little to no news. Perhaps it or another SciADV project could release this year. In addition to working on their own IPs, MAGES. normally makes visual novels for external IPs. Generally, they time their releases to coincide with the end of a season of their anime adaptations.
After all, 2024 marks a major anniversary year for far more than just Steins;Gate. February 26th, 2024 marks Chaos;Head NoAH’s (and therefore, the SciADV franchise’s) 15th anniversary. August 25th, 2024 marks Occultic;Nine volume 1’s 10th anniversary. And December 18th, 2024 marks Chaos;Child’s 10th anniversary. @kagakuadv made a New Year’s tweet recognizing the Chaos; entries’ anniversaries. Disappointingly, however, they have not announced any plans for them.
COLOPL’s next two quarterly financial reports will release in May 2024 and August 2024. I would expect to see more information surrounding Steins;Gate’s 15th anniversary plans by then. July 28th is also “Steins;Gate Day” and Anonymous;Code’s second anniversary.
