Konami Industry (1973–91) · Konami (1991–2015) · Konami Holdings (2015–22)
Revenue · FYE Mar 2026
$3.1B (¥494bn)
Net profit · FYE Mar 2026
$632.3M (¥100bn)
Konami Group: long-term performance & turning pointsSales (revenue) and profit-margin ratio
Sales (¥ bn)Net margin (%)
1969From the arcade to the living room: opening world markets with intellectual property
Revenue (¥ bn, bars) · net margin (%, line)
Source: securities reports
FY1992 · consolidated
Revenue$178M
Net income$3M
Net margin1.8%
→
FY2006 · unconsolidated
Revenue$2.3B
Net income$198M
Net margin8.8%
1969Kozuki Kagemasa starts a jukebox repair and rental business in Osaka
1973Konami Industry Co., Ltd. established; amusement machine manufacture begins
1978Full entry into the arcade game market
1981Scramble and Frogger become hits in North America
1982Konami of America established in the United States
1984Konami Ltd established in Britain; Konami GmbH in Germany
1984Listed on the new second section of the Osaka Securities Exchange
1985Yie Ar Kung-Fu, the first Famicom title, released
1988Designated to the first sections of the Tokyo and Osaka exchanges
1991Renamed Konami
1993Head office moved from Osaka to Minato-ku, Tokyo
1995Jikkyou Powerful Pro Yakyuu series launched on PlayStation
1997Konami Gaming, Inc. established in Las Vegas
1998Metal Gear Solid released on PlayStation; over 7m copies sold worldwide
1999Yu-Gi-Oh! Official Card Game Duel Monsters Vol.1 released
1999Listed on the London Stock Exchange
2001Fitness operator People acquired by friendly tender offer; stake taken in Hudson
2002Listed on the New York Stock Exchange
2005New gaming-machine building completed in Las Vegas
2006Digital Entertainment split off; Konami becomes a pure holding company
Konami spent its first three and a half decades moving between businesses without ever letting go of the engineering underneath them: jukebox repair became amusement machines, amusement machines became arcade hits in North America, and arcade development became a catalogue of console franchises. Revenue climbed from $177.6M (¥23bn) at the start of the 1990s to $2.3B (¥262bn) by the year the company split itself into a holding structure — and by then it was also carrying fitness clubs and casino cabinets, with the question of which of the three would actually pay still open.
A games maker born out of a jukebox repair shop
In March 1969 Kozuki Kagemasa (上月景正) started a jukebox repair and rental business in Osaka. Drawing on the electronics skills the repair trade had given him, he established Konami Industry Co., Ltd. in 1973 and began manufacturing amusement machines. From the late 1970s the company moved into arcade game development, and in 1981 Scramble and Frogger became hits in the North American market, winning Konami an international name as an arcade game maker. In 1982 it set up the US subsidiary Konami of America, and in 1984 it placed bases in Britain and Germany as well, giving itself a sales organisation abroad. A little over a decade after its founding it had built a footing in the North American market, and it had turned from a domestic maker of amusement machines into an export-oriented development company.
In 1984 Konami listed on the new second section of the Osaka Securities Exchange, and in 1988 it was designated to the first sections of both the Tokyo and Osaka Securities Exchanges. Alongside the listing it accelerated development of titles for the Family Computer, beginning with Gradius in 1985 and going on to send out hit series in Castlevania (1986), Ganbare Goemon and Contra. The development strength built up in the arcades was carried across to home consoles, and Konami secured its position as a third-party publisher on Nintendo's platform. The funds raised by the listing went into development investment, and the body of intellectual property accumulated in the late 1980s became the asset that would support later platform shifts. With success in the home console market, Konami's earnings base widened from the arcade alone to multiple platforms.
<em>Metal Gear Solid</em> past seven million copies, and the PlayStation generation taking its IP global
Through the 1990s Konami grew its revenue by supporting the PlayStation platform. Around 1995 it launched Jikkyou Powerful Pro Yakyuu and Winning Eleven, cementing its standing in sports games, and Metal Gear Solid, released in January 1998 under director Kojima Hideo (小島秀夫), became a hit that sold more than seven million copies worldwide. Its fusion of cinematic staging with stealth action widened the expressive range of games and made Konami's name known around the world. The spread of the PlayStation and the internationalisation of Konami's own titles came together, and the moment was the turning point at which the share of revenue earned overseas began to rise. Holding series in both sports games and action games raised the stability of earnings in the home console business.
In 1991 the company changed its name from Konami Industry to Konami, signalling a turn into an entertainment company beyond the frame of “industry”. In 1993 it moved its head office from Osaka to Minato-ku, Tokyo, placing its base for communication and for recruitment in the capital region. In 1997 it established Konami Gaming, Inc. in Las Vegas, Nevada, entering the business of gaming machines for casinos. The idea of carrying arcade technology across into casino equipment is one instance of Konami's habit of reusing technology it already holds in a new regulated market. The Gaming & Systems business would later grow into a stable source of group earnings, and as its share of the North American casino market widened it became the pillar supporting profit outside Digital Entertainment.
Fitness and casinos: diversification into three unlike businesses at once
From the late 1990s into the early 2000s Konami moved to diversify its businesses. It listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1999 and on the New York Stock Exchange in 2002, widening its access to overseas capital markets. In February 2001 it took the major fitness club operator People (now Konami Sports) as a subsidiary through a friendly tender offer, stepping into a business area outside digital. In August of the same year it took an equity stake in Hudson, bringing in game titles such as Momotaro Dentetsu as its own intellectual property. It was a period of combining fundraising through overseas listings with M&A to widen the range of the business, planting a footing at the same time in three areas of quite different character — games, fitness and casinos — with the aim of spreading its sources of earnings.
In 2005 it completed a new building for gaming machines in Las Vegas, giving it a North American base for developing and manufacturing casino cabinets. In March 2006 it split off the Digital Entertainment business into a new company, Konami Digital Entertainment, and Konami itself became a pure holding company. Introducing a structure of business-specific subsidiaries was intended to manage games, sports and gaming — businesses of quite different character — independently of one another, and to raise the speed of managerial decisions. Under the holding company the profit and loss of each business became separately visible, and the decisions on allocating resources were visible through it as well. This separation would also support the organisational flexibility Konami needed when it later moved towards mobile.
2007The mobile shift: turning the profit structure and recasting the axis of earnings
Revenue (¥ bn, bars) · net margin (%, line)
Source: securities reports
FY2007 · consolidated
Revenue$2.2B
Net income$138M
Net margin6.2%
→
FY2020 · consolidated
Revenue$2.5B
Net income$185M
Net margin7.5%
2007Head office moved to Tokyo Midtown
2012Hudson absorbed by merger into Konami Digital Entertainment
2012Kozuki Takuya becomes president and representative director
2013Mobile Jikkyou Powerful Pro Yakyuu begins service
2013Land acquired in Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo
2015Reorganisation into a development-headquarters structure announced
2015Kojima Hideo leaves the new structure
2015Second Las Vegas plant completed, raising gaming capacity
2015Renamed Konami Holdings
2019Konami Creative Center Ginza goes into operation
2020esports Ginza studio begins operating as an esports facility
2020eBASEBALL Professional League finals held jointly with NPB
2020Higashio Kimihiko becomes president and representative director
The decade after the holding-company split was spent answering the question the diversification had left open. Konami moved the axis of its earnings from home consoles onto free-to-play mobile games, and the answer came back in an unusual shape: revenue fell while profit rose. The same years also showed how far apart the three businesses stood — a mobile margin that kept climbing, fitness clubs that spent years near break-even, and casino cabinets that earned quietly behind a barrier of licence regulation.
Revenue fell and profit rose: the switch to a free-to-play model
In the first half of the 2010s Konami moved to shift the axis of its earnings from home console games to mobile games. As smartphones spread, mobile games on the free-to-play (F2P) model — free to start, paid for by items — were growing. Konami put existing popular titles such as Jikkyou Powerful Pro Yakyuu and Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links onto mobile. Unlike the one-off revenue of a packaged sale, the F2P model generates continuing payment income, so the margin on a hit title exceeded that of a home console game. The strategy of taking series whose names had been made in home consoles into the mobile market supported the recasting of the profit structure, creating a cycle in which payment revenue grew while the cost of acquiring new customers was held down.
In June 2012 Kozuki Takuya (上月拓也), son of the founder, became president and representative director and took personal command of the mobile shift. In March of the same year Hudson was absorbed by merger, consolidating game titles such as Momotaro Dentetsu. In October 2015 the company was renamed Konami Holdings, marking its standing as a holding company. Segment profit in the Digital Entertainment business grew 2.6-fold, from $159.7M (¥17bn) in FY14 to $396.7M (¥44bn) in FY18. Consolidated revenue shrank from $2.5B (¥297bn) in FY07 to $2.2B (¥218bn) in FY13, then came back to $2.4B (¥263bn) in FY18. A structure emerged in which profit grew even as revenue shrank, and the move to mobile changed the very shape of the earnings. The decision to redirect home console development resources to mobile showed up in the numbers as an improvement in margin.
Chronic losses in health services, a locked-in North American share in gaming
The health services business (later Sports), built around fitness clubs, had been expected to be a pillar of the diversification, but its earnings kept running hard. In FY08 health services recorded revenue of $868.1M (¥90bn) and a business loss of $79.4M (¥8bn), and in FY10 it was still $28.5M (¥3bn) in the red. A facilities-operating business carries heavy fixed costs in rent and wages, so earnings swing with the number of users. In FY11 it finally turned to a profit of $35.1M (¥3bn), and in FY16 it posted $38.6M (¥4bn), but this came nowhere near the margin of the Digital Entertainment business. Improving the earnings of a facilities business took time on two fronts — renewing the equipment and winning members — and its contribution to profit growth across the group was limited.
The Gaming & Systems business, by contrast, held steady earnings centred on the North American casino market. It recorded business profit of $22.9M (¥3bn) in FY07 and $82.7M (¥7bn) in FY11, and in 2015 it completed a second plant in Las Vegas, raising production capacity. Because licence regulation acts as a barrier to entry for casino cabinets, once a share has been taken it is hard for competitors to move in. The three businesses — Digital Entertainment, Sports and Gaming — had different earnings characteristics, and the combination of mobile's high margin, the low margin of the Sports business and the steady income of Gaming shaped Konami's business portfolio. With the source of profit concentrated in Digital Entertainment, Gaming served as a cushion against the business cycle.
Consolidating development in Ginza, and what the attached esports arena meant
In 2013 Konami acquired land in Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo, and in December 2019 the Konami Creative Center Ginza went into operation. The building housed game development studios together with esports Ginza studio, a dedicated esports facility, uniting content production and esports in one place. Konami's development sites had until then been scattered across the Kobe Technical Center and the Tokyo Technical Center in Zama, and physical distance stood in the way of co-operation between teams and of decision-making. Consolidating in Ginza raised both the co-operation among developers and the company's power to recruit, and the central location also worked in its favour for collaboration with outside creators and business partners. Bringing the sites together was a measure that faced two problems at the same time: improving development efficiency and securing able people.
In January 2020 Konami held the e-Climax Series and e-Japan Series of the eBASEBALL Professional League jointly with Nippon Professional Baseball, marking a full entry into the esports business. In April 2020 Higashio Kimihiko (東尾公彦), the first president from outside the founding family, took office, setting out a policy of taking on challenges without being bound by existing frames and speaking of a plan to redefine the amusement arcade as an esports centre. Recasting existing amusement facilities as esports venues was one answer to the falling profitability of a store-based business, and can be called a strategy of raising the drawing power of the facilities by running tournaments using the company's own titles. With visitor numbers at amusement facilities continuing to fall, holding esports tournaments was an attempt to create a new reason to come.
2021Digital Entertainment carries the profit, and the records fall
Revenue (¥ bn, bars) · net margin (%, line)
Source: securities reports
FY2021 · consolidated
Revenue$2.5B
Net income$293M
Net margin11.8%
→
FY2025 · consolidated
Revenue$2.8B
Net income$498M
Net margin17.7%
2021Digital Entertainment posts record revenue and business profit; Gaming returns to profit
2022Konami Tokyo Studio opens in GINZA SIX
2022Renamed Konami Group
2022Construction begins on Konami Creative Front Tokyo Bay in Ariake
2023Konami Osaka Studio opens in Umeda, Osaka
2024FY23 consolidated revenue ¥360.3bn, net profit ¥59.1bn
2025FY24 consolidated revenue ¥421.6bn and net profit ¥74.6bn — a record
2025Konami Arcade Games established to reorganise the amusement business
When the pandemic closed the fitness clubs and restricted the casinos, the gap that had long been visible in the segment tables became impossible to ignore, and Konami leaned the company decisively towards the business that needs no premises. Four years later revenue and profit both stood at the highest in the company's history, developers were spread across three new studios in Ginza, Ariake and Osaka, and the group was carrying an equity ratio above 70 per cent.
What the pandemic made plain: the advantage of digital earnings
The pandemic of 2020 divided Konami's businesses sharply. The Sports business fell to a loss of $54.3M (¥6bn) as fitness clubs closed, and the Gaming & Systems business recorded a loss of $18.7M (¥2bn) as casinos operated under restrictions. The Digital Entertainment business, by contrast, grew on stay-at-home demand to revenue of $1.9B (¥204bn) and business profit of $687.4M (¥73bn), and the consolidated result was an increase in profit, with revenue of $2.6B (¥273bn) and net profit of $301.6M (¥32bn). More time spent at home pushed up both payments in mobile games and sales of home console games, and the contribution of digital content to profit became clear. Between a digital business that needs no premises and the Sports and Gaming businesses that depend on premises being open, the difference in earnings resilience stood out.
In FY21 the Digital Entertainment business recorded revenue of $2.0B (¥214bn) and business profit of $695.9M (¥76bn), and the Gaming & Systems business returned to a profit of $31M (¥3bn). The Sports business managed only a slim profit of $6.4M (¥700m), with the recovery in fitness club users running slowly. Consolidated net profit reached $499.2M (¥55bn). A structure settled in which the Digital Entertainment business accounted for more than 70 per cent of consolidated revenue and more than 90 per cent of profit, and Konami's character as a digital content company grew stronger. The pandemic laid bare the gap in earning power inside the business portfolio and became the occasion for pushing the concentration of managerial resources into digital a stage further, lowering the relative weight of the facilities businesses.
FY24: revenue of ¥421.6bn and the best result in the company's history
Consolidated revenue in FY23 (the year ended March 2024) was $2.6B (¥360bn) and net profit $420.6M (¥59bn). The Digital Entertainment business went on growing, with revenue of $1.8B (¥248bn) and business profit of $564.4M (¥79bn), while the Gaming & Systems business, at revenue of $281.8M (¥40bn) and business profit of $44.1M (¥6bn), reflected the recovery of the North American casino market. The Sports business held a steady profit, with revenue of $336.6M (¥47bn) and business profit of $16.4M (¥2bn). In FY24 (the year ended March 2025) consolidated revenue reached $2.8B (¥422bn) and net profit $492.4M (¥75bn), rewriting the best performance since the company was founded. Steady operating revenue from mobile games formed the base and titles for home consoles added on top, and that structure carried the record. All three businesses secured a profit, and the stability of the portfolio rose with it.
Business profit of $582.2M (¥88bn) in the Digital Entertainment business was 7.5 times the $119.9M (¥12bn) of FY13, showing the profit growth since the mobile shift. Long-running series such as Yu-Gi-Oh!, Jikkyou Powerful Pro Yakyuu, eFootball and Pro Yakyuu Spirits generate continuing payments, and a business model in which the operating revenue of existing titles covers the development cost of new ones has become established. The method of monetising a single piece of intellectual property across several media — mobile, home console, esports, card games — is the driving force of the profit growth. The better known a series, the higher the rate at which mobile users convert into paying ones, so the accumulation of intellectual property is tied directly into earnings, and the company's dependence on new series is lowered.
Three studios developing at once, behind an equity ratio above 70 per cent
In May 2022 Konami opened the Konami Tokyo Studio in GINZA SIX, and in July of the same year it changed its name from Konami Holdings to Konami Group. The renaming reflects an intention to align the brand across the group as a whole, on top of its function as a holding company. In October 2022 it broke ground on the Konami Creative Front Tokyo Bay in Ariake, Koto-ku, Tokyo, and in March 2023 it opened the Konami Osaka Studio in Umeda, Osaka. Thickening its development strength across three sites in Ginza, Ariake and Osaka, it established Konami Arcade Games in June 2025 and is reorganising the amusement business. Adding developers and spreading the sites gave it a formation able to bear the simultaneous development of several titles.
Konami Group's total assets reached $4.4B (¥665bn) in FY24 and shareholders' equity $3.2B (¥482bn), against interest-bearing debt of $394.7M (¥60bn) — an ample financial base. The equity ratio stands above 70 per cent, leaving room to move quickly on a substantial development investment or an acquisition. The Digital Entertainment business earns most of the profit, the Gaming & Systems business earns steadily in the North American casino market, and the Sports business gives the portfolio depth. Under the holding company structure each business keeps its autonomy while the parent binds together the sharing of intellectual property and the allocation of development resources — and that structure is the managerial base of Konami Group as a diversified company. A company that began repairing jukeboxes has, after more than half a century of changing what it does, turned into a comprehensive entertainment company whose core is the creation and operation of intellectual property.
The turning points, read in full: what was at stake, what was chosen and what the revenue did around it. The Japanese edition is the edition of record and carries the sourced dossier behind each decision — background, options weighed, outcome — linked under every decision.
Key decision · 1985
From arcade-only into the living room: going multi-platform on Nintendo (1985)
A bet on a growing market, away from one with a ceiling
The point of this decision is that Konami did not throw away an arcade business that had already won international standing, but redirected its development strength into a fast-growing new market. Arcade machines sell only by the location, so even a hit has limited room for its earnings to grow. Riding on another company's platform in Nintendo can be seen as a bet that gave up part of the initiative in development in exchange for the fruit of sales in an entirely different order of magnitude. It was a judgment that took the growth of the market over pride in being a specialist maker.
In the event, this bet settled the skeleton of Konami as an IP company. The series born in the late 1980s became assets monetised over and over across generations of hardware and changes of business model, running through to today's earnings structure centred on IP operated on mobile. This entry in 1985 can be called the first turning point at which a company that had started as a specialist began to change its character into a company built around IP, tied to no particular hardware or line of business.
Launching the Yu-Gi-Oh! Official Card Game: a new line of IP earnings in paper cards (1999)
Carrying IP outside the core business — Konami's lightness of foot
The core of this decision is that Konami left the main battlefield of game software and monetised its IP in a wholly different medium, paper cards. Stepping into a market Bandai had already commercialised as Carddass, and entering it as the official card game on the strength of its relationship with Shueisha, the publisher of the original work, shows a lightness of foot that does not cling to the core business of a games maker. As with the shift of stage from the arcade to home consoles in 1985, Konami can be seen to have strengthened by one further degree, in this entry, its character as a company that carries IP without attachment to any particular medium.
Even so, primary material showing who inside the company led this judgment, and how far, is thin for 1999, and the process of the decision itself is still not fully told today. Yet the course by which a small new business in paper cards grew, over a quarter of a century, into one of the world's largest TCG brands — digital editions included — makes it the earliest embodiment of Konami's management style of monetising a hit IP repeatedly across the walls between media.
Kojima Hideo's departure and the dissolution of Kojima Productions: resources redirected to mobile earnings (2015)
Earnings efficiency against a creator as a brand asset
The heart of this decision is that it recast the development structure itself against the yardstick of earnings efficiency, rather than responding to a financial crisis. Against an operated mobile business earning several billion yen a month, big-budget console development — heavy in development cost and long in schedule — was forced down the order of managerial priority, however high its critical standing. Placing a flagship creator and his production organisation outside the structure can be seen as the most visible consequence of the mobile shift pursued under President Kozuki Takuya, a member of the founding family.
What this judgment brought, however, cannot be measured by financial indicators alone. Kojima Hideo's departure was widely reported by overseas media as well, and it shaped for a long time an image of Konami within the games industry as a company that makes light of its creators. How great a price did a recasting that succeeded on the numbers — the profit growth of the Digital Entertainment business — exact from a different asset, the brand? Whenever Konami's thoroughly efficiency-driven management style is weighed, that question still hangs over the company today.
This English edition follows the Japanese one chapter by chapter. The Japanese edition remains the edition of record: it carries the source-by-source citations, the financial tables and the shareholder and executive records. 日本語版（詳細）— Konami Group full history in Japanese →
Konami Group Corporation — 有価証券報告書 (annual securities reports), including the 沿革 corporate-history section and the consolidated filing for the year ended March 2015; 会社年鑑 (company yearbook) for the consolidated year ended March 1999; and Konami Group official announcements and results materials.
Nihon Keizai Shimbun — 日本経済新聞 (Nikkei Inc.): 30 Jan 2020; 14 Jul 2021 on the launch of Nintendo's Family Computer on 15 July 1983.
Famitsu — ファミ通.com (Kadokawa Game Linkage): 26 Sep 2020 on the day Castlevania was released; 25 Apr 2022 on the day the Famicom version of Gradius was released.
gamebiz — gamebiz: 2017; 10 Mar 2023 on Sensor Tower data putting worldwide 2022 revenue for Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel above US$130m.
Coverage of the Kojima Hideo affair: Game*Spark — Game*Spark, 30 Dec 2015, a chronology from the departure to independence; Nlab — ねとらぼ (ITmedia), 16 Dec 2015; DAMONGE, 20 Dec 2015, a former Konami executive on the corporate culture and the conflict with management.
Yu-Gi-Oh! card-game sources: 4Gamer.net, 17 Nov 2016 on the service launch of Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links; J-CAST Trend — J-CASTトレンド, 16 Jun 2011 on the Guinness World Record of 25.1bn cards sold worldwide; TCG未開封パック収集おじさんの記録, 13 Jul 2023 on the first booster pack and 26 Oct 2024 on the earlier Bandai edition.
Gendai Business — 現代ビジネス (Kodansha), 27 Jul 2019, by Miyazaki Yu. Futaman+ — ふたまん＋ (Futabasha), 22 Apr 2020 on Yie Ar Kung-Fu, Konami's first Famicom title.