Roblox’s 10-K for 2025 gives two figures for the same year. Revenue was $4,890.6 million. Bookings were $6,788.4 million. The $1,897.9 million between them is mostly money players paid in 2025 that Roblox has not yet counted as earned.
The reason is a rule about timing. IFRS 15 has a company recognise revenue when it satisfies a promise to the customer, either at a point in time or over time. The US filers below follow the same logic under US GAAP. A game sold with live services makes both kinds of promise at once. The player pays at the till, the company delivers over the following months, and the unearned balance sits on the balance sheet as deferred revenue. Bookings is the figure companies built to show purchases before that spreading.
Roblox says it records bookings in deferred revenue first, then recognises them over the estimated lifetime of a paying user, which was 27 months at Dec 31, 2025. Its reconciliation starts from revenue of $4,890.6 million, adds a $1,934.0 million change in deferred revenue, takes off $36.1 million of other items and lands on bookings of $6,788.4 million. The same table for 2024 runs from $3,602.0 million to $4,369.1 million. Revenue grew 36 percent in 2025. Bookings grew 55 percent, by our arithmetic. The filing calls the change in deferred revenue the vast majority of the difference and says bookings show trends sooner than revenue does.
Electronic Arts defines net bookings in its 10-K as net revenue plus the change in deferred net revenue for online-enabled games. For the year to Mar 31, 2026, net revenue of $7,531 million plus $495 million gives $8,026 million. A year earlier, $7,463 million minus $108 million gives $7,355 million. Revenue rose about 1 percent and net bookings rose 9 percent, which the filing credits mainly to Battlefield 6 and EA’s global football franchise. The earlier year shows the reverse. Deferred revenue fell, so revenue ran above bookings.
EA’s filing also shows how much revenue depends on an estimate. For a game with services, it generally allocates 75 percent of the price to the software licence, recognised when the player gets the game, and 25 percent to future updates and online hosting, recognised over an estimated offering period. For free-to-play sales from Jul 1, 2025, EA set that period at about eleven months for mobile and for PC and console, where it had been eight and twelve. The filing says this changed neither net bookings nor operating cash flow, and cut net revenue by an estimated $74 million. The estimate moved revenue. Bookings did not move.
Take-Two defines net bookings in its 10-K as the net amount of products and services sold digitally or sold in physically during the period. For the year to Mar 31, 2026, net bookings were $6,721.0 million against net revenue of $6,656.4 million. A year earlier they were $5,648.0 million against $5,633.6 million. The gap is small, but the filing says why it can be large in a given quarter. Some products defer revenue over an estimated service period of five to fifteen months, so the quarter with the most net bookings can differ from the quarter with the most net revenue. The 10-K calls net bookings an operating metric and gives no table that reconciles it to net revenue. It does break out recurrent consumer spending, meaning virtual currency, add-on content, in-game purchases and in-game advertising. That was $5,196.6 million, or 78.1 percent of net revenue.
Ubisoft reports both measures in euros. In its release of May 20, 2026, IFRS 15 sales for the year to Mar 31, 2026 were €1,395.7 million and net bookings €1,525.1 million. Ubisoft says net bookings is IFRS 15 sales adjusted for the services component, unconditional commitments in licence or distribution agreements, and financing effects. It lists the measure among its non-IFRS indicators, which it says are not presented in the financial statements. The fourth quarter of 2024-25, which the release says included Assassin’s Creed Shadows, shows the launch effect. Net bookings were €902.3 million and sales €795.3 million. A year later the quarter ran the other way, with €415.0 million of net bookings and €419.5 million of sales. Ubisoft’s recurring player spending, which it calls player recurring investment and defines as digital items, DLC, season passes, subscriptions and advertising, was €924.7 million, or 60.6 percent of net bookings.
Put the four side by side and the labels stop lining up. Roblox adds the whole change in deferred revenue and a small “other” line. EA adds only the deferral on online-enabled games. Ubisoft adjusts for named items, and Take-Two defines the figure by what was sold. Roblox calls bookings a non-GAAP measure. EA and Take-Two call theirs operating metrics, and Ubisoft calls its measure an alternative performance indicator. Recurrent consumer spending has the same problem. Take-Two measures it against revenue, Ubisoft against bookings, and EA reports live services and other net revenue of $5,383 million, 71 percent of its net revenue.
The rules for the label depend on where the company reports. The SEC’s guidance on non-GAAP measures says a company must show the most directly comparable GAAP measure with equal or greater prominence. Roblox’s table starts from revenue and works up to bookings. The European rules for adjusted measures are in Reading a European annual report.
Read the two figures for the same period and the same company, and treat the difference as the movement in deferred revenue plus the company’s own adjustments. Bookings above revenue means purchases are running ahead of recognition. Bookings below revenue means earlier sales are being recognised faster than new ones arrive, as at EA in the year to Mar 31, 2025. Do not compare one company’s bookings with another’s until you have read both definitions.
On this site, the figures of a results page are revenue, operating income and net income as the filing reports them, never bookings. An article may also quote bookings from the company’s own release, as bookings and never as revenue.