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Q4 2007 Financial Report
Its avail from download from funcom.com
Link: http://www.funcom.com/funcom/frontend/files/CONTENT/Funcom_Q407-presentation.pdf
Funcom developer house has final reported its fourth-quarter earnings the 6th February, or the three-month period ending; The December 31, 2007. Revenues slightly declined as predicted over the same period the previous year from $2.1 million to $1.7 million, and losses before taxes are from $1 million to $3.1 million.
Funcom is slowly bleeding from the latest delay and costs associated with its only and almost ready product game Age of Conan (other products are under researh, but will not see the light this year), which was delayed back in January from March to May 20.
Funcom claims that this was as expected, and that the revenues are expected to continue to decline slightly even more, until the game's is final gone "Gold". Funcom also claim that more then 500,000 people have signed up for the Age of Coan beta and the Age of Conan newsletter.
Olav Sandnes, the Financial director i Norway Funcom was on the TV to give his report to the shareholders.
Link: http://www.na24.no/naeringsliv/article1585329.ece
Also Olav Sandnes make a statement that the Age of Conan wil have a market price on 50 dollar per unit. The montly fee will be about 15 dollar. He also say that Funcom will call Age of Conan if the game get 1 million subscribe and a failure if they only manage to hold on 100,000.
Link: http://www.hegnar.no/bors/article251226.ece
The fact is that the stock has never really recover from last year delay. A lot of people pointed out that it was wise to invest in funcom. But the graph have never manage to reach up it former height again. As showed here:
Funcom have a reserve around of 51 millon dollar, but its draining fast and Age of Conan is the only hope for the company, sadly. A major shareholder company CRMC (Capital Research and Management Company) have already sold there shareholdings in Funcom because the lost faith and was afraid to loss even more money. We can only hope and pray for Funcom at this moment, when they face there darkest hour in the company history.
Comments
i love economics and this thread rocks :P.
anyway the loss isnt that bad. it can be recovered fairly quickly when AoC is released. you also forget Funcom makes more than 1 game at a time. no doubt there is some game in the works that should bring in some cash. short term for Funcom. expect more losses until 2 or 3 months after release of AoC. long term expect a solid revenue earner to refill that reserve and support expansions of Funcom if they maintain a decent game (and if Anarchy online is any indication they will take care of it like their own child)
MMO wish list:
-Changeable worlds
-Solid non level based game
-Sharks with lasers attached to their heads
Had they concentrated their efforts to making the game instead of hyping it to high heavens, we might already enjoy the ready product and not this poophole they call beta, which is actually more like alpha fyi.
Not the first time marketing department spends too much cash, just sad to see a nice idea go down the drain.
There is simply no way AOC will have 1 million subscribers no mater how good the game finally is.
Reasons are - steep hardware requirements , unusual approach to combat, WAR and WOW
Usually MMOs are ok with 3-400.000 subscribers , and rarely ever any subscription MMO passed the 1 mil border. Only L2 and WOW if i am not mistaking.
FFXI was another one past the 1 million mark as that was cross platform, perhaps the main part of AOC's cashcowing is via the 360 version, they'll better be quick about it too then, cuz if players can't handle the pc version i think the 360 users will back off
Bring on the WARRRRGGHH!
Everything is not going all that well for Funcom… they are not making any money, they are simple eating away their cash… they better come up with damn good solution to actually MAKE money…
Btw… one thing that I find interesting… anyone know if Funcom actually OWNS RHE license?
I'll never understand how people can find joy in the loss of others.
As to Funcoms current ecconomic state, it is rather nice that they openly release this information. I'm sure they are a bit in some rough times, but I'd also suspect that part of the downturn of their stocks are do to the downturn of almost all stocks world wide in response to the US recession. But once AoC hits, I'm sure the stocks will boom.
Oh and I doubt Funcom themselves think the game won't be a success unless it breaks 1 million users. Considering you can count the number that have on one hand, at least here in the west. It would be very nice if the game did, but I doubt they are saying if it doesn't, the game will have failed.
Where in those phrases u quoted did the OP express his satisfaction about funcom bleeding financially???????
And also i dont know how things work in norway, but if they are anything like in most of other european countries companies are obligated by law to release their balance sheets at the end of the year. So thank u Funcom for doing what u are obligated by law to do, u are so kind
Publicly traded companies have to release these kinds of things the world over.
The stock markets are the worlds legalized gambling casinos.
Anyways, Norway's government (aka their taxpayers) will help support Funcom even if they fail to make money. Its one of the benefits (to the company) in doing business in a heavily socialized area.
As someone pointed out, this kinda thing lets Uwe Boll keep making horrible video game movie after horrible video game movie (while he makes money) that all lose money. The wonderful people of Germany subsidize him and his crap movies. Your hard earned german mark at work (heh).
1 million subs seems to be shooting pretty high. Its possible, but certainly not anywhere close to a cautious or conservative estimate given the sub numbers of every single non-WoW game including ones with major IPs.
But if they get LOTRO level numbers it will be above the 100k failure mark so that would seem not too bad.