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Funcom presented its quarterly figures today (aug 26)
Aceundor
Member Posts: 482
To be honest the reading wasnt too good. My conclusions are
- Relatively small loss (USD -748.000)
- Stable ammount of subscribers (approximately 100K players). i.e. no growth during last 6 months.
- Reduced expectations for next quarter. I dont beleive in any big growth of subscribers anymore. )
- Still plenty of cash (USD 37 mill) so they will not go belly up or need cash infusion from investors. (Funcom is here to stay, like it or not)
- Funcom is now more and more dependant of TSW in order to grow, as a company.
Links:
Originally posted by BishopB:
Are a lot of the trolls just angry kids with old gaming hardware?
Comments
They have more than enough money to produce their upcoming MMO, as well additional content for AoC. Good to know that they're in the clear.
Hmm, the way I read it its 748.000 in plus before "stuff" and then a loss of 236.000 USD in the end.
I still find it a little strange they launched the winback campaign in the middle of the summer, right after their most advanced patch. I would have waited until the patch was more tested on live. Perhaps they wanted more customers right then.
Age of Conan highlights
Revenue
• Revenues within previously guided range of 5,000 to 7,000 TUSD
• Lower revenues compared to Q208 - mainly due to launch of the Age of Conan
game in Q208
• Slowly declining revenues from Anarchy Online
· The Company increased its sales and marketing
activities during July and ran a re-evaluation
campaign for Age of Conan. These activities led to
an increase in customer levels.
· The Company will maintain its higher level of sales
and marketing activities for Age of Conan with the
goal of attaining growth over time in the customer
levels of Age of Conan.
· In June, the Company released an important update
to the item and role-play system of Age of Conan
which is expected to contribute to increased
customer longevity in the game. The reception from
players and press has been positive.
· At GC, in August, the first Expansion Pack for Age
of Conan was revealed. The Expansion will take
place in an Asian cultural setting. Several playfields
of the Expansion are currently playable and the
Company has a large development team working on
the product. The release date for the Expansion
Pack has not yet been set.
· The Company continues to invest in Age of Conan
with the goal of both increasing the average
subscription period and optimizing the digital
distribution of the game. Several significant updates
to the game will be released during the fall.
· In Q2 Funcom received the remaining amount of the
minimum guaranteed royalty from Neowiz, a leading
Korean publisher that has obtained the right to sell
and operate Age of Conan for a five-year period in
Korea. The payments are treated as deferred
income but the withholding taxes related to the
payments have been charged to the P&L as income
taxes. Neowiz has not yet communicated a launch
date for the game in Korea.
....
The number of employees, excluding customer
service personnel, is up from 296 at the start of
Q209 to 309 as of 30 June, 2009.
The subscriber base has remained relatively stable through the year
and to this date, with monthly swings depending on activities, market
effects, competitor activities etc.
Where you get the 100k from?
quarterly revenue USD 6.1 mill
price pr month USD 15 = USD 45 pr quater
6,1 mill divided by 45 is 135.000 subscribers. However they have other income flows and I have reduced it somewhat dow to approx 100K. My figure is not exact in any way.
Originally posted by BishopB:
Are a lot of the trolls just angry kids with old gaming hardware?
Wow I'm surprised how bad the predicted revenue is for next quarter, that means they expect to lose more people over the 3 months than they gained with the winback programmes, Thier predictions show that even though the winback programmes stemmed the tide the game is still slowly losing subs as time goes on. Quarter 4 is going to be terrible if they think quarter 3 is going to be worse than quarter 2 despite the big influx from winback and giving away thousands of copys of the game.
For the company as a whole it doesn't look like the financials are much to worry about but predicting to lose people during what was their only real chance at increaseing the subscriber base is real bad news for the game.
Every currently running MMO is expecting loss in the coming quarter.
Release of Aion and CO is one.
People always jump the new MMO wagon in search of greener pastures. And usually come flock back 1-2 months later.
It was the same thing last year when WAR released. After the first month, more then 60% didn't sub already.
And seeing the Hype for Aion, it's only logical they expect a bad 3rd quarter.
But it doesn't mean that the 4th quarter will be even worse. No expacs or any significant new MMO releases are expected in the 4th quarter this year!
only 1 week of the next quarter is after aions release, people who play to near the launch and then cancel won't be felt in quarter 3 at all, quarter 3 includes all of the winback people and the majority of the free trial people and yet they are expecting to lose more than they gain. Quarter 4 is when the main loss to aion and other games will be felt and there will be no winback to bring in 10's of thousands of people.
Aion is released on the 22nd (I think) of September. Quarter 3 will include July, August, September, even people who cancel very early for Aion will only be felt in 1/3rd of the period, the majority who cancel near the date won't be felt at all.
Quarter 3 includes July when there was a huge ammount of positive talk about populations, the winback brought in 10's of thousands of people and funcom came out and told us the servers were packed. to expect to lose people over what is going to be the best period untill the expansion is very bad news for the games population.
July, August, September - only wombie land will not suffer bad in these 3 months -these 3 months are the worst months in the year for mmo games. I think the worst decision Craig made was to do winbacks in the middle of summer - that is almost like Gaute's moves.
In my experience win back programs never work anyway, the trouble is that you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Once you've blown it you're usually stuck with it until the game goes F2P or shuts down, it's just a fact of life.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
quarterly revenue USD 6.1 mill
price pr month USD 15 = USD 45 pr quater
6,1 mill divided by 45 is 135.000 subscribers. However they have other income flows and I have reduced it somewhat dow to approx 100K. My figure is not exact in any way.
Yeah I did $14 per month to figure in people that pay 3 and 6 months subs, and then estimated 75% of the revenue being AoC subs and got approximately 109k subs. Like you said, hardly scientific, but since Funcom won't release the numbers, it's all anyone can do.
Anyway, at least we can end the fantasy of AoC subs growing. 1.6 million less revenue this quarter than last doesn't equal increased subscribers.
Whether they can make a come back will depend alot on the upcoming x-pac and what they do from now till than.
Hopefully the game will be very polish and alot of what they promise will be in-game, couple with the release of x-pac, which i believe quite a few players will come back to take a look.
If everything goes well, by word of mouth, slowly players will forget about the past and sub back.
So from now till the release of the x-pac will be a very critical period.
Flop again, and we can say bye bye to this game, perform well, it will definately last longer than War...
My view...
RIP Orc Choppa
You are forgetting one thing, " There Track Record " it says you will be getting an unfinished expansion with several things missing or to be included later. No early look, must purchase expansion when it does launch constant patching to fix problems that were known. Anyone disagree, did'nt think so
Jihad works both ways
MAGA
Hmm, unfinished expansion..weird...
Anywho what is wrong with 100k subscribers?
If there are enough people for me to log on to a server
and not feel a ghost town, that's good enough for me
You guys do play chess right? Well I hope GD does also. I am sure you found yourself stranded with just a few figures left on the field obviously losing the game. But you did have a very daring strategy on the plate and without one single mistake you could just pull it off before the time runs out.
FC is right now compeeting against time. If I were him I would pull some more money from that reserve that everyone is bragging about and that will soon be no good for AoC and hire a few programmers to speed things up a little bit. 1.06 end of october, expansion around christmas. The only way to pull AoC out of this mess. Craig, man if you plan to launch expansion at 2010 than rather pull the plug on AoC, take a vacation and after you clear your head start working on the other MMO. This is the last chance. There is lots of people monitoring how the game improved but ... it is still not enough. 1.06 HAS to have working sieges, some meaningful pvp shit (armor included) . If you fail to do anything I mentioned like i said that game will be forgotten. And this is NOT a game that could be 100% niche and do ok - AO is complex game where lack of content and low pop is beaten by twinking your characted and pvping or even crafting. Don't even compare this game to AO ... it is a nice game but it is build on endgame content stuff and it has to have players in order to enjoy it.
Open beta, there's where players will get their feedback about hows the x-pac doing. And i assure you this time FC will be very careful about their game and promise.
Anymore negative feedback about unfinish content and this game will tank...
RIP Orc Choppa
Here's the best way to describe whats happening.
Pretend that an airplane started flying perfectly vertically (upwards) until the engine stalled out. Before that plane begins its downward spiral , and does a complete nose dive into ground, there will be a moment of Zero gravity. Where for that one moment the planes is still in the air....but all instrumentation in the plane is going haywire with needles spinning and lights flashing, and alarm buzzers sounding...all of which indicating you are going to "Hell in a hand basket." Even though, technically, you are still in the air and still in flight.
That's what this report is. It's that moment of stillness before the great plunge.
I do hope things get better financially. IMO the main prob is little to do after you hit 80 and the pvp is not very good. I hope they dont release an incomplete expansion.
Played : WOW, LOTRO, COH/COV, EQ2, SWG, and WAR.
Playing EVE Online and AOC.
Wtg for SW:TOR and WOD
Well if Funcom would concentrate on fixing what is broken and stop taking the Conan IP in a direction outside the lore of Conan(Tiger Mounts!) and get back to providing content rich with Conan lore the game might rebound. Right now I see the game becoming a World of ConanCraft. Let's give people pets and mounts and that'll keep them happy! LOL! Stick to the lore Funcom and make larger zones that are not so linear. Move the game away from WoW type play. Funcom could have made this game awesome...instead they tried to make it like WoW and continue to make it like WoW. Sad I tell you.
EDIT: Funcom's stock is worth pennies so USA companies can't even buy it, IDK maybe a 40 cent stock is a hot item in Norway but in the financial countries it is "worthless" than the paper it is printed on! - pun
Ya looks like no one stayed after the free trials and that money will go fast if TSW does as well as age of conan. AoC got more money from Box sales that were sold way back last year and it has AO still, Funcom also got an extra 1-2 million for selling the rights to Asia.
Basically they are way below 100,000 k subs a year latter and with a lot of great games coming up how will it fair over the next year?
The cash on hand is gone as soon as the launches come up do to increased advertising and other costs associated with a launch.
I found this interesting: " The Company continues to optimize and improve the
cost of customer acquisition through digital channels
and have seen positive development in this area
during Q2. What does that mean? Viral Marketing
Funcom has reviewed all of its assets relevant for
impairment testing. This process has led to
recognition of an impairment loss of around
3,1 MUSD for Age of Conan due to a decrease in
numbers of subscribers for the game. Funcom Q4 10 report.
http://forums.ageofconan.com/showpost.php?p=2926123&postcount=7 500 mains/alts on Tyranny in past 30 days - instead of merge servers let's open a new PvP server, again! http://forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=106427
They have more than enough money to produce their upcoming MMO, as well additional content for AoC. Good to know that they're in the clear.
The additional peeps hired (4% of total company employees) are most likely for TSW at this stage. The coming quarter includes Aion's release, so every major MMO is expecting to loose some customers. All in all, Funcom has plenty of reserves to get both TSW as well as the AoC expansion out.
The population is at best 70k subs, one thing to note is 100,000 downloaded the free trial and another X players downloaded the free trial or resubbed during the free trials and over 100% of them left the game, meaning they lost more than gained.
That means the game is not worth playing today for a crazy number of people, it is 50th on Xfire today an all time low which means Xfire works 100% of the time.
Here is some things most people didn't factor in to the revenue:
Norway Welfare - The Company was awarded around 240 TUSD in
funding from the Norwegian Film Fund for the
development of its Java based free-to-play MMO.
This game reached its game-play beta stage in
August.
More money from Asia, Funcom wont get a penny from subs there - In Q2 Funcom received the remaining amount of the
minimum guaranteed royalty from Neowiz, a leading
Korean publisher that has obtained the right to sell
and operate Age of Conan for a five-year period in
Korea.
Just funny AoC is doing so bad they are going to be firing all the Norwegians and have it all produced in China, prrobably by the people who sell you gold in game ;p The Company has, during the last two quarters,
been conducting a proportionally larger share of its
development in lower cost countries, most
significantly in China. This cost initiative will be
continued and expanded in the coming years and
the Company expects a significant decrease in
average cost per developer.
This is funny, people have more free time so they played more, duh - yet the didn't get an increase of subscribers in AoC so for every marketing dollar they put in they get zero back and all they talked about was selling this game instead of I don't know making it a good game.
Sales, marketing and PR efforts during summer
increased customer inflow and subscriber numbers,
but the full effect of this was somewhat offset by
higher churn during the Summer July/August
• Activity levels in-game have during the Summer
months been very high
In conclusion, every quarter the revenue drops 1.5 million so how long can it carry that on?
Funcom has reviewed all of its assets relevant for
impairment testing. This process has led to
recognition of an impairment loss of around
3,1 MUSD for Age of Conan due to a decrease in
numbers of subscribers for the game. Funcom Q4 10 report.
http://forums.ageofconan.com/showpost.php?p=2926123&postcount=7 500 mains/alts on Tyranny in past 30 days - instead of merge servers let's open a new PvP server, again! http://forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=106427
Finaticd started nice and I was like "wow he got acc hacked" but than he proved that I don't quote him as comparison for nothing.
Lets all state our personal thing he embarrased himself with
The population is at best 70k subs, one thing to note is 100,000 downloaded the free trial and another X players downloaded the free trial or resubbed during the free trials and over 100% of them left the game, meaning they lost more than gained.
That means the game is not worth playing today for a crazy number of people, it is 50th on Xfire today an all time low which means Xfire works 100% of the time.
Don't you just love how self proclaimed analytic plays with totally fictional numbers? Dude that was embarassing!
"over 100% of them left the game" wow thats amazing !unreal news. how in the hell can you get more than 100% of those players leaveing?if theirs only 100 kor so way yall go on an on about it your saying that theirs 100 k joined an then theirs even more of those 100 that left? your math is funny here.
almost as funny as xfire which i been experimenting with . play aoc for 6 hours one day get credit for 3.it updates weirdly.its not like theirs people going to school now an play time will fall off or nothing .naw its only cause you say so an some how theirs more than 100% of the people who tried the trials left!
/shrug oh well thanks for telling me how a game i enjoy atm is doomed (tm) maybe we can get ya some advice on that from the eq doom sayers their going on 10 years now an eq will die any time !
"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." Robert E. Howard, The Tower of the Elephant (1933)
100,000k came from Avery. Avery then pointed out the AoC census more than doubled! Xfire users playing AoC more then doubled!
And it was estimated 70-80k players played last quarter go dig up the financial report thread here for math.
Then AoC's revenue fell: Q109: 7,725 - Q209: 6,145 = 1580 revenue drop ...... 1580/7725 = 20% drop in revenue!!! Without the additional sources I listed.
So if Avery is right and 100,000 players did free trials or if only 20,000 did or if 6 billion players did, they did not stay so 100% of free trial population is gone plus 20%!
AoC lost an amount equal to 100% of free trials plus another amount of 20% of their veteran players! Take a math class,
--This is supported by the financial report and Xfire being at an all time low!
Next Quarter:
Revenues projected to drop by 19% -2% and it is usually in the middle so around 10% using the same easy formula above.
-----------
Populations if therer were 70-80k subscribers last quarter using optomistic numbers on Funcom's behalf: 56k - 64k subscribers this quarter. subs don't always mean players. So I have been right with my 60k figure and Xfire has been dead on.
Funcom has reviewed all of its assets relevant for
impairment testing. This process has led to
recognition of an impairment loss of around
3,1 MUSD for Age of Conan due to a decrease in
numbers of subscribers for the game. Funcom Q4 10 report.
http://forums.ageofconan.com/showpost.php?p=2926123&postcount=7 500 mains/alts on Tyranny in past 30 days - instead of merge servers let's open a new PvP server, again! http://forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=106427
if your givieng the math class it would be intresitng .so which game should i be playing then since this one is dead?even tho theirs players on when i play . an again so cod4 is the future wow killer cause thats what is number 2 on x fire .or is guild wars the real wow killer since its the number 2 mmo on the list atm.
"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." Robert E. Howard, The Tower of the Elephant (1933)