Video Games

Shift Up records over 500% profit increase ahead of Stellar Blade launch

Shift Up is eating well thanks to Nikke

Marco Wutz

Shift Up / Sony

South Korean developer Shift Up released its financial results for 2023, reporting massive gains in terms of operating profit – this value went up by 516% year-on-year and grew to around $82.4 million USD. Looking at net profits, Shift Up managed to turn a loss of around $5.3m USD from 2022 into a plus of around $79m USD – not a small feat by any means.

A majority of this growth stems from the royalties Shift Up gets from Level Infinite, the Tencent subsidiary publishing its popular gacha game Nikke: Goddess of Victory. 

Known for its generous amount of fanservice, the mobile shooter featuring an array of sexy anime girls has proven to be a steady competitor on the tough Asian gacha market – and that’s where most of Shift Up’s money is being made. Though by no means a match for Genshin Impact or Honkai: Star Rail, the two powerhouses developed by HoYoverse, it brings in millions of dollars in revenue on a monthly basis.

In cooperation with Sony, Shift Up is currently working on its first triple-A game, Stellar Blade. It’s slated for release on April 26, 2024, for PS5 and will be one of the bigger titles to launch around that time frame, which bodes well for sales.

Earlier this year, Shift Up initiated the process of getting listed on the Korean Stock Exchange – with analysts predicting it to be valued at over $2 billion USD.

CEO and co-founder Kim Hyeong-tae still holds a majority of shares in the studio with Tencent being the second-largest shareholder. Together, the two parties control over two thirds of Shift Up’s shares. This strong financial report coupled with the impending launch of Stellar Blade should put Shift Up in a very strong position for the near future – now the Soulslike only has to do one thing: Be good and sell well.

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Marco Wutz

MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg