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xfire shows AoC numbers decreasing :(
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Answer this
In the 2Q they had 415k subscribers and sold 800k boxes. They lost 6 million dollars
In the 3Q they will have less than 415k subscribers and sell significantly less than 800k boxes.
While people may say '200k subs is a good number', that is based on other companies financial situation. Funcom is in debt, loses money every day, and doesn't have enough cash on hand to pay operating expenses for 3 months. 200k subscribers will not be enough to make Funcom profitable just because it made other companies profitable.
Answer this
In the 2Q they had 415k subscribers and sold 800k boxes. They lost 6 million dollars
In the 3Q they will have less than 415k subscribers and sell significantly less than 800k boxes.
While people may say '200k subs is a good number', that is based on other companies financial situation. Funcom is in debt, loses money every day, and doesn't have enough cash on hand to pay operating expenses for 3 months. 200k subscribers will not be enough to make Funcom profitable just because it made other companies profitable.
I'm not sure where you get your data but from looking at their financial report they have $36M in the bank and they around 23M in debt. So assuming they don't see continued huge losses they are not in bad shape. However they can't continue to loose 6M a quarter and my feeling is they could be worse in the next quarter if AoC continues to tank the way the xfire numbers imply. I'm already pretty sure they will miss their forcast for Q3 by quite a bit. If that happens their stock will completely tank and future investment will be difficult or impossible. Then they will be looking at seriously cutting staff to survive and our chances of seeing AoC fixed will start to dry up.
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Ethion
Answer this
In the 2Q they had 415k subscribers and sold 800k boxes. They lost 6 million dollars
In the 3Q they will have less than 415k subscribers and sell significantly less than 800k boxes.
While people may say '200k subs is a good number', that is based on other companies financial situation. Funcom is in debt, loses money every day, and doesn't have enough cash on hand to pay operating expenses for 3 months. 200k subscribers will not be enough to make Funcom profitable just because it made other companies profitable.
I'm not sure where you get your data but from looking at their financial report they have $36M in the bank and they around 23M in debt. So assuming they don't see continued huge losses they are not in bad shape. However they can't continue to loose 6M a quarter and my feeling is they could be worse in the next quarter if AoC continues to tank the way the xfire numbers imply. I'm already pretty sure they will miss their forcast for Q3 by quite a bit. If that happens their stock will completely tank and future investment will be difficult or impossible. Then they will be looking at seriously cutting staff to survive and our chances of seeing AoC fixed will start to dry up.
It's hard to explain..... yes, they only lost 6M (before taxes) and 8M (after taxes), but their cash flow actually decreased by 16M. Look at the lines that say " cash assest at beginning of quarter" and "cash assets at end of quarter".. the difference is 16M. That said.. they have about 36M in Cash assets left.. which is basically enough to cover them for 6 months of operation. (assuming they continue to have -16M cashflow per quarter). I think 6months is being optimistic since it's unlikely they are going to have 800k box sales or 415k subscribers in the 3Q.
Also, that does not include repayment of the debt they have. This is significant because 23M of the debt they have is listed as short term debt, which means it is 'due' in less than 2 years. They have another 3M in debt that is long term, which doesn't really matter. But that 23M is significant because that is what makes a company go bankrupt. If that loan comes due and Funcom can't pay, they will be forced into bankruptcy.
But that is an entirely different issue than what is going to happen to them in 6 months. In six months, they simply won't have enough money to pay the normal bills. Companies declare bankruptcy to prevent their debters (23M) from seizing assets, but even declaring bankruptcy won't keep the game alive if they can't pay for bandwidth and for their staff.
I don't think people understand just how bad of financial shape Funcom is in. On Monday, investors will show you.
When it comes to subscriptions, I have a hard time seeing how they can do anything but drop a good deal further. WoW opened the eyes of millions to the MMO genre, and the marketing buzz around Age of Conan was pretty big. Many bought in, most were dramatically disappointed... the word of mouth referrals should be tiny as a result. Hard to make truly educated guesses about the cost of running the game vs. subscription income -- I don't imagine those items are broken out individual on financial reports
Seems to be dropping even faster now. Saturday the 9th they had 16442 hours and yesterday they dropped down to 13544, or a loss of 2898 hours which is a drop of almost 18% in a week. When WAR goes open it will hammer (groan - bad pun
) the last nail in the coffin I am afraid. Too bad , if they had held off on release until next spring IO think they would have faired much better, but then again they have made almost every mistake it is possible to make since release so maybe it was just a lost cause from the beginning.
I miss DAoC
The lies made it a lost cause. People would have been alot more tolerant of them if they hadn't tried time after time in the few communications they had with us to make us think it was us or our computers that was the problem and not AoC itself. Nothing good can come from treating the community like its stupid. Evidently honesty has no direct translation into Norwegian lol.
And I thought politicians could lie, they need to hire the PR staff at Funcom lol.
The lies made it a lost cause. People would have been alot more tolerant of them if they hadn't tried time after time in the few communications they had with us to make us think it was us or our computers that was the problem and not AoC itself. Nothing good can come from treating the community like its stupid. Evidently honesty has no direct translation into Norwegian lol.
And I thought politicians could lie, they need to hire the PR staff at Funcom lol.
tell me about it. They lost my business the first week when their patch broke the game for me and all I got from my trouble tickets and email was a automated reply. Then came the Baghdad Bob "our game is fine, it is your computer'" replies on the tech forums, then the amateur hour moderators and GM's. Combined with a series of bad and buggy patches they have made every mistake possible on every level.
I think this games release should be used as a teaching aid for game developers on what not to do.
I miss DAoC
Weekend on Weekend numbers are dropping.
Sunday 3rd of August: 20217 hours
Sunday 10th of August: 17512
Sunday 17th of August: 14713
Warhammer open beta is starting
Yes they are at the moment, but did you notice that the amount of players on X-fire went up by just under 500 people? Yes the hours went down, meaning that there seem to be a lot of casual players - kinda in-line with the average age of player.
Warhammer open beta is starting
I was sure everyone showed that AoC numbers were dropping, they have as many active subscriptions as SWG o.O.
Of course warhammer's numbers will drop less than a month after release, regardless of whether it's good, solid, and a success.
Just have to hope it's numbers increase after the initial drop.
It already is.
Yes they are at the moment, but did you notice that the amount of players on X-fire went up by just under 500 people? Yes the hours went down, meaning that there seem to be a lot of casual players - kinda in-line with the average age of player.
Based on today's numbers the average play time was 3.85 hours. Not sure how to compare this day by day unless you do it daily. I don't know how in xfire to get detailed numbers gong back... But for today.
wow - 4.62 hours
guildwars - 3.24 hours
AoC - 3.85 hours
eve - 3.55 hours
lotr - 4.46 hours
another interesting milestone
eve players - 3824
AoC players - 3821
Here is how the hours looked several weeks ago when I posted.
AOC the average player plays around 250 minutes per day (4.16 hours)
wow - 280 min/day (4.66 hours)
eve - 200 min/day (3.33 hours)
LotR - 250 min/day (4.16 hours)
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Ethion
Yes they are at the moment, but did you notice that the amount of players on X-fire went up by just under 500 people? Yes the hours went down, meaning that there seem to be a lot of casual players - kinda in-line with the average age of player.
Or it could just mean that 500 fanboys have now installed Xfire in an attempt to bring the numbers up.
Or it could mean that 500 people came back after 2 months to see if the game got better, saw that it did not and logged off after 1 hour.
In the end it does not really matter though, because what matters is that overall the hours played have been declining steadily, and predictably. with WAR 4 weeks out, that is not a good thing.
Yes they are at the moment, but did you notice that the amount of players on X-fire went up by just under 500 people? Yes the hours went down, meaning that there seem to be a lot of casual players - kinda in-line with the average age of player.
Or it could just mean that 500 fanboys have now installed Xfire in an attempt to bring the numbers up.
Or it could mean that 500 people came back after 2 months to see if the game got better, saw that it did not and logged off after 1 hour.
In the end it does not really matter though, because what matters is that overall the hours played have been declining steadily, and predictably. with WAR 4 weeks out, that is not a good thing.
Active subs, in number of total players are more important than how often the game is played. Or 500 people came back from vacation. Point is, its just under 500 people up from an initial snapshot of less than 1% of people to begin with. Personally I uninstalled X-fire when I brought Guild Wars 3 yrs back. Its certainly something to keep an eye on I guess.
So what if those 500 people are casual or hardcore, doesn't matter to me, was just something I noticed from reading the thread over the weekend.
Sure the more you play the game the more you like it and because people playing AoC now according to X-fire are doing so at 15-40 mins less per day on average is no biggie. Thats just an average of casual and hardcore combined.
How would you know that the snapshot showed less than 1% of the people to begin with? Do you have accurate and actual subscription numbers?
I like your "The more you play the more you like it" statement - for me it was quite the opposite i have to say. The more i played it the more i realised just what an atrocity this game had become and how much short it had fallen compared to what was promised to the customers.
Be that as it may though - i give you another reason for more players (and still less time than a week previously) on the weekend:
Funcom have started emailing AO customers to invite them to free trials.
There is also Buddy keys who are finally working and some people might find that 3 USD is worth for playing for a weekend.
Either way though - the best indication will be seen in 4 weeks when WAR releases. Don't be surprised when you find yourself on an empty server come the end of september.
But don't worry - Funcom has already stated they won't merge servers (ironically they have not say why they won't).
How would you know that the snapshot showed less than 1% of the people to begin with? Do you have accurate and actual subscription numbers?
I like your "The more you play the more you like it" statement - for me it was quite the opposite i have to say. The more i played it the more i realised just what an atrocity this game had become and how much short it had fallen compared to what was promised to the customers.
Be that as it may though - i give you another reason for more players (and still less time than a week previously) on the weekend:
Funcom have started emailing AO customers to invite them to free trials.
There is also Buddy keys who are finally working and some people might find that 3 USD is worth for playing for a weekend.
Either way though - the best indication will be seen in 4 weeks when WAR releases. Don't be surprised when you find yourself on an empty server come the end of september.
But don't worry - Funcom has already stated they won't merge servers (ironically they have not say why they won't).
That actually sounds like a more viable reason for the increase in numbers.
Although im not sure why AoC are calling it a *buddy* key. I wouldnt dare give any friend of mine a key to play AoC....they would never speak to me again. Should rename it *people I hate* key.
They are also in a difficult position with server merges. Reasons being the existing guilds with a Battle Keep wouldnt be very impressed with a merger, and secondly they would just cock it up big time.
GameDev1: "So, we are losing subscribers, we need to get some new people in-game!"
GameDev2: "Yea... well, we could get the buddy key thing going..."
GameDev1: "But we have to generate buzz! We have to do it in a way that no-one has done it before!"
GameDev2: "Hmmm... I know, lets charge them for it!"
GameDev1: "Charge for a free trial? Brilliant!"
GameDev2: "Brilliant!"
Are they still charging for trials?? I'd heard that they emailed all the AO customers with trial keys and it would be extremely insane at this time to charge for the trial what with numbers dropping and poor financial performance making things look bad. What they need is to add subs and charging people to download the trial seems just insane to me...
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Ethion
Looks like AoC has officially dropped below Eve in xfire with LoTR coming up next as it sinks down the charts....
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Ethion
AO buddy keys were used to help raise thier Subscriber count before the end of the quarter.
I have no sympathy for this company or game, thank god a real game thats actually fun is coming out in a month.
Latest update on the Xfire stats....
AOC #28
LotRO #29
Going down in flames it seems...
Gogogo LOTRO!
It's obvious that the Preview of WAR is affecting AoC. We have to wait until the release of WAR, WLK and MoM to see the real results.
Even if LoTR wasn't gonna pass AoC by the end of the week warhammer is gonna kill this game and leave a game like LoTR with little impact. Warhammer is definitely competing with AoC both being pvp oriented etc. So I'm expecting a lot of the same people that came to AoC looking for a better game will be moving to Warhammer. Games like LoTR, EQ2, and Vanguard will probably see far less impact since they are PvE oriented. Wow will probably see the largest impact from any game yet.
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Ethion