Acti-Blizz or EA buying Funcom makes very little sense business-wise.
Funcom doesn't have a positive cashflow last I checked.
With EA bleeding cash as well, I doubt EA will buy them.
Acti-Blizz also makes no sense when Vivendi is trying to unload them.
You don't purchase something that is losing money when your parent company is trying to sell you; makes you unattractive to potential buyers.
I can see one of the asia's game makers (Maybe NCSOFT? or Tencent?) but from a business point of view, Funcom isn't that attractive.
Your first point about Acti-Blizz may be off the mark somewhat.
The horror and gritty fantasy titles (The Secret World & Age of Conan) are not catered for at all by them. Having these in their stable of games could be a very clever move - it certainly won't interfere with Titan...
The two games are both good ones - whose limitations and problems they have suffered have stemed from the terrible development, support and management practices Funcom has indulged in with them.
A relaunch of both titles after 6 months to a year of modest redesign, bug fixes and x-pac development with the advertising power of Blizz behind it could be very successful indeed.
Both are beautiful looking games with unique identities and/or IPs and in the case of AoC - sold extremely well at launch.
Blizzard to fix those issues which constitutes the broken promises or poor realisation of features in a fairly short timescale with their resources and have a ton of players either jump back into those games or try them for the first time.
I really dont understand all of FC hate. Sure AOC released buggy but instead of shelving the game and firing all the dev team like swtor did, they buckled down and made it a great game. Look at TSWs launch it was near flawless imo. Have you DC haters every experienced a WoW major patch or xpac launch day? Wow servers can be down for DAYS at a time.
I really hope if someone does buy funcom its trion or MAYBE ncsoft. Hell let the people making AA buy it to establish a western studio. If Ncsoft got it and put in a AION truly f2p model it would be good.
Playing: FFXIV, DnL, and World of Warships Waiting on: Ashes of Creation
AOC still is considered the worst free to play model out there to date with no incentive for returning players to come back to the game except by sub fee. The servers merged yet again to what two servers now and both are dead with tons of complaining about no population on the official boards with funcom not even posting crap , just the secret world forums. Im sorry but AOC is a decent game but funcom , at least on that team should be fired or laid off and let someone come in and fix the game. There is no excuse for the servers being that dead unless A there is about zero content and support from funcom or B the game isnt as fun as people try to make it out to be and people leave fast. I personally go with answer A as i liked AOC.
Originally posted by cronius77 AOC still is considered the worst free to play model out there to date with no incentive for returning players to come back to the game except by sub fee. The servers merged yet again to what two servers now and both are dead with tons of complaining about no population on the official boards with funcom not even posting crap , just the secret world forums. Im sorry but AOC is a decent game but funcom , at least on that team should be fired or laid off and let someone come in and fix the game. There is no excuse for the servers being that dead unless A there is about zero content and support from funcom or B the game isnt as fun as people try to make it out to be and people leave fast. I personally go with answer A as i liked AOC.
I think you may be complaining more about marketing department and the company directors than the dev team.
Funcom’s only tangible assets right now are The Secret World MMORPG and their design staff / studio. I could see some interest in acquiring both from several companies but only a few are actually in a position to do so. ZenMax Media (Bethesda Ownership) is aggressive in acquiring new IPs. SOE comes to mind. Then, there is NCSOFT and Nexon. A surprise candidate might be CCP but I don’t know if they have the capitol.Microsoft is out there but I am not sure if TSW could be ported to console play with the current engine.
I have a hard time seeing EA, Activision or any of the old school names making a run at the property. But EA does have a publishing deal and rumor was they would buy out the company if they hit the right profit margin. Maybe that didn’t happen.
I really dont understand all of FC hate. Sure AOC released buggy but instead of shelving the game and firing all the dev team like swtor did, they buckled down and made it a great game. Look at TSWs launch it was near flawless imo. Have you DC haters every experienced a WoW major patch or xpac launch day? Wow servers can be down for DAYS at a time.
I really hope if someone does buy funcom its trion or MAYBE ncsoft. Hell let the people making AA buy it to establish a western studio. If Ncsoft got it and put in a AION truly f2p model it would be good.
AoC - because of the lore primarily was the only MMO I played which I can, hand on heart say I was borderline fanatical about.
I wanted it to succeed more than any other game I had ever played - and I am not known for being a wishful thinker.
It was with surprising bitterness that I and nearly every single dyed-in-the-wool fan in my guild threw in the towel on AoC - bitterness and frustration based ENTIRELY around the utter failure of FC to do what was painfully, obviously needed to fix the game.
I have played a fair number of MMOs and never been so angered by the complete disregard given the player base, or the promise of a game. I wouldn't describe sieges still being broken after THREE years as an example of FC 'buckling down' and making the game great...
I don't 'hate' FC - I just think they were negligent and foolish - I even remember a Dev stating publically that they thought their own forums were irrelevant - at a time many players who were fully behind the hoped for success of the game were constructively vocal about the changes necessary to get it on the right track.
If I had been treated like that as a paying customer in any other commercial situation I would have sued the s-o-b's - but the T&C's of MMOs prevent such recourse.
Any company which does the equivalent of putting it's fingers in it's ears and shouting 'la la la' whilst its customers state their concerns deserves to fail.
AoC IS a great game - it just needs fixing - and the dribble of improvements FC have planned with their tiny team are NOT the ones to do it - at least not on their own. Years of failure and crashing player numbers and server merges have clearly demonstrated it needs a shot in the arm, and that robbing it of the resources it needed to be overhauled to develop the relative flop which is TSW was another bad mistake in a long string of howlers.
Giving credit where credit is due... you have been right with most of your posts and predictions about Funcom. I remmeber them from months ago in the TSW forums. But as official "bearer of bad news" you shouldn't be surprised fans like to take shots at you. It's right there in the "messenger" job description
To update my thread:
#1: Funcom Q3 2012 came in: They dodge the buyout completely.
#2: They released in an indirect way The Secret World subscription numbers. 55-70k.
#3: They admit they will be cash negative for 2013.
#4: Confirm again that they are not exploring any new large-scale MMOs.
TSW sub numbers ... wtf? I recall it had enough 'good' things to be at least 100k+?
If I had to guess, it's probably a little higher than the 55-70k but not too much because of lifetime subs, that aren't counted against the october billing, but also can't accurately say how many of them are still playing regularly.
There was also the subscription irregularities debacle where they were charging people from one country, more than people from others, something that is pretty much unheard of in MMO gaming. They did go some way to fix it, but by that point a lot of the damage had already been done.
Comments
Your first point about Acti-Blizz may be off the mark somewhat.
The horror and gritty fantasy titles (The Secret World & Age of Conan) are not catered for at all by them. Having these in their stable of games could be a very clever move - it certainly won't interfere with Titan...
The two games are both good ones - whose limitations and problems they have suffered have stemed from the terrible development, support and management practices Funcom has indulged in with them.
A relaunch of both titles after 6 months to a year of modest redesign, bug fixes and x-pac development with the advertising power of Blizz behind it could be very successful indeed.
Both are beautiful looking games with unique identities and/or IPs and in the case of AoC - sold extremely well at launch.
Blizzard to fix those issues which constitutes the broken promises or poor realisation of features in a fairly short timescale with their resources and have a ton of players either jump back into those games or try them for the first time.
One can hope in any case!
I really dont understand all of FC hate. Sure AOC released buggy but instead of shelving the game and firing all the dev team like swtor did, they buckled down and made it a great game. Look at TSWs launch it was near flawless imo. Have you DC haters every experienced a WoW major patch or xpac launch day? Wow servers can be down for DAYS at a time.
I really hope if someone does buy funcom its trion or MAYBE ncsoft. Hell let the people making AA buy it to establish a western studio. If Ncsoft got it and put in a AION truly f2p model it would be good.
Playing: FFXIV, DnL, and World of Warships
Waiting on: Ashes of Creation
I think you may be complaining more about marketing department and the company directors than the dev team.
Funcom’s only tangible assets right now are The Secret World MMORPG and their design staff / studio. I could see some interest in acquiring both from several companies but only a few are actually in a position to do so. ZenMax Media (Bethesda Ownership) is aggressive in acquiring new IPs. SOE comes to mind. Then, there is NCSOFT and Nexon. A surprise candidate might be CCP but I don’t know if they have the capitol.Microsoft is out there but I am not sure if TSW could be ported to console play with the current engine.
I have a hard time seeing EA, Activision or any of the old school names making a run at the property. But EA does have a publishing deal and rumor was they would buy out the company if they hit the right profit margin. Maybe that didn’t happen.
"It has potential"
-Second most used phrase on existence
"It sucks"
-Most used phrase on existence
AoC - because of the lore primarily was the only MMO I played which I can, hand on heart say I was borderline fanatical about.
I wanted it to succeed more than any other game I had ever played - and I am not known for being a wishful thinker.
It was with surprising bitterness that I and nearly every single dyed-in-the-wool fan in my guild threw in the towel on AoC - bitterness and frustration based ENTIRELY around the utter failure of FC to do what was painfully, obviously needed to fix the game.
I have played a fair number of MMOs and never been so angered by the complete disregard given the player base, or the promise of a game. I wouldn't describe sieges still being broken after THREE years as an example of FC 'buckling down' and making the game great...
I don't 'hate' FC - I just think they were negligent and foolish - I even remember a Dev stating publically that they thought their own forums were irrelevant - at a time many players who were fully behind the hoped for success of the game were constructively vocal about the changes necessary to get it on the right track.
If I had been treated like that as a paying customer in any other commercial situation I would have sued the s-o-b's - but the T&C's of MMOs prevent such recourse.
Any company which does the equivalent of putting it's fingers in it's ears and shouting 'la la la' whilst its customers state their concerns deserves to fail.
AoC IS a great game - it just needs fixing - and the dribble of improvements FC have planned with their tiny team are NOT the ones to do it - at least not on their own. Years of failure and crashing player numbers and server merges have clearly demonstrated it needs a shot in the arm, and that robbing it of the resources it needed to be overhauled to develop the relative flop which is TSW was another bad mistake in a long string of howlers.
There was also the subscription irregularities debacle where they were charging people from one country, more than people from others, something that is pretty much unheard of in MMO gaming. They did go some way to fix it, but by that point a lot of the damage had already been done.