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Will this company ever release another MMO Title?
lumache
Member Posts: 314
Well what do you think? After this giant release disaster and the PR beating they have suffered, do you think this company will release anything else? Is this the last we have seen from funcom?
-Lum
Comments
Yep it's called the secret world.
http://www.darkdaysarecoming.com/
i hope so. even with most ppl hating it. i still enjoy playing. and AO is still pretty alright
I think they will probably get bought out by some other company at some point, but the studio that's currently Funcom will probably release more MMO's
Oh god, I hope they don't.
The poll is void simply because FC have been working on Cry Gaia / The Secret World for some time.
The viral marketing they did for it is actually a work of genius when you start digging.
Anyhoo, as far as I can tell, the Game Director is none other than the original creator of the Anarchy Online lore Ragnar Tornquist ( http://ragnartornquist.com/ ).
The game will use the Age Of Conan engine and is based on H.P. Lovecraft lore set in the modern times but with an element of the occult in there. Think of an armageddon type MMO (from the religious sense, NOT the film).
Top 10 Most Misused Words in MMO's
A more fair poll would be.
Will Funcom release more than one major patch.
I'm guessing they will get the new patch out and then that is it for Funcom. It's already mid October, I dont' see them making it to January
That won't matter if Funcom can't make enough money to pay their bills.
AoC was supposed to be their "money maker" and if they continue hemmoraging players they won't have enough to pay for AoC developers, servers, bandwith, PR and marketing, let alone an additional developing team to produce other games to over-hype.
But we will know more about all that at the end of the month when their Q3 report comes out.
this poll is fail because its weighted in the negitive and there for biased. But, I'm going to vote anyways.
FC will develope a new MMO, but they maybe SoE or EA by the time it ready for launch. The company seems ripe for picking and when their new game launches using the AoC engine the parent company will get all the credit for being innovative.
Edit: The reason I said the poll is fail is because it can't be used for data comparison. If you wanted the poll to be used for that purpose then you need to change it to simply yes or no.
Games:
Currently playing:Nothing
Will play: Darkfall: Unholy Wars
Past games:
Guild Wars 2 - Xpiher Duminous
Xpiher's GW2
GW 1 - Xpiher Duminous
Darkfall - Xpiher Duminous (NA) retired
AoC - Xpiher (Tyranny) retired
Warhammer - Xpiher
The poll wasn't made to be used for data comparison.
It was made to be used as a sharp stick to poke AoC fans with.
Consider yourself poked.
The poll wasn't made to be used for data comparison.
It was made to be used as a sharp stick to poke AoC fans with.
Consider yourself poked.
Considering I voted part neg I'm not poked but I'll poke you back
Games:
Currently playing:Nothing
Will play: Darkfall: Unholy Wars
Past games:
Guild Wars 2 - Xpiher Duminous
Xpiher's GW2
GW 1 - Xpiher Duminous
Darkfall - Xpiher Duminous (NA) retired
AoC - Xpiher (Tyranny) retired
Warhammer - Xpiher
Nobody is going to buy funcom. Funcom has a ton of debt, their 'talent' is in Norway and they really don't have anything going for them. If the next patch is launched relatively bug free, it will make AOC a 'stable' game and the game might be sold to someone, but the company won't come with it just because of the debt.
Did you just say that The Secret World will use the same game engine that AoC uses (aka updated AO code)? eeeeeK
Secret world actually has a good chance since GG left the company.
You keep posting that Funcom is in a bad financial situation. Could you back those claims up with something? The rest of us can look at the official financial statements, and they show the complete opposite: That Funcom got a healthy stack of money in the bank from AO and Dreamfall.
If there is any good left in the world, they won't be able to release another game due to the debt or attempt to fool a whole new generation of puppets into keeping their deceitful company afloat. The genre will be better when they are gone and forgotten.
Waiting for: A skill-based MMO with Freedom and Consequence.
Woe to thee, the pierce-ed.
I suppose Funcom has found a niche market in masochists, if they can maintain that market they might continue business.
O_o o_O
You keep posting that Funcom is in a bad financial situation. Could you back those claims up with something? The rest of us can look at the official financial statements, and they show the complete opposite: That Funcom got a healthy stack of money in the bank from AO and Dreamfall.
It shows they have a big chunk of cash in the bank, 30mill+ yes however it also shows they have 20 mill to pay back in the short term and it shows they lost over 7mill in Quarter 2 despite selling 800k copies of the game.
I think Novembers financial report should tell us pretty conclusivly if there is any future for funcom. If they still lost millions in Q3 then I think it's over for them as Q4 will be worse. Costs in Q3 and Q4 will be similar but Q4 won't have the decent ammount of revenue from the July and August subs when there was still a good number of subscribers.
Craig is likely to do a fantastic job. Hes a great guy and did amazing things for years at Funcom, in ever job the guys done in the company.
The new game, hell Ragnar Tornquist is working on that one. Hes the guy that gave Anarchy Online all the rich vivid greatness that world has even today. Now that Gaute is gone, its all downhill from here.
But they arent hurting for money by any frame of the world. Theyre subsidized by the Norwegian government. tons and tons of grant money going there. Not to mention Microsoft is still paying out tons of investment money.
Dispite what you might wish in your underoos of underoos, Funcom is doing quite well financially.
Games i'm playing right now...
"In short, I thought NGE was a very bad idea" - Raph Koster talking about NGE on his blog at raphkoster.com
That would be true if launch wasn't a one time expense, they weren't selling any more boxes and AoC was their only income. None of those things is true. MMOs are incredibly cheap to run. It's the development that costs so much.
That doesn't stop what I said being true at all. I said that the november report will tell us the future of funcom, because then we will know how much they are making or loseing in Q3 when they didn't have any launch costs. If they still lost millions in Q3, then Q4 and Q1 and probably Q2 next year would be worse and the company is doomed at least without laying off massive ammounts of staff.
They pretty much arn't selling any boxes and AoC while not their only income is their primary one by a long way.
Just as an example of the current box sales at amazon age of conan is selling less copies than hero's of might and magic 3 a game from 8 years ago that has had 2 sequals since then. There is over 1380 video games selling more boxes than AoC each day on amazon.
Q3 is going to be a moderate loss. Investors and their creditors know it so that's not going to mean much. Q4 will probably be a small loss or possible gain. That won't mean anything for the company's long term prospects either. AoC is far from being their primary source of income. Gaming isn't even their primary source of income. The company doesn't have "massive amounts of staff" supporting their MMOs so laying them off isn't going to happen. Funcom isn't doomed. It may not be a rosy picture but they'll survive. The boxes are still in the big box stores and they're still moving some at a lowered price.
According to funcom they had 415k subs in August, that means even more than that in July. So how on earth is Q4 with 3 months with less than 100k subs going to be better then Q3 that had the decent months of July and August? There is no reason for the costs to be much different. So it's all about the revenue and Q4's revenue is going to be massivly worse than Q3 revenue. If funcom don't make a profit in Q3 (and they won't) I don't see how they can turn it around, as revenue isn't going to improve in the next 6-9 months at least.
Age of conan is their primary source of income you can read that very quote from the finance report.
I belive they have about 350 staff in total. The average game developer makes over 70k US a year. So lets go with an average salary of 50k. Thats over 17 million USD in staff costs alone.
I just don't see how you can think they will lose money in Q3 but be fine, Q3 is going to be as good as it gets untill they improve their revenue and I don't see an improved revenue coming in the near future at all.
Just a couple of quotes from the financial report to show those who think aoc isn't the main income stream for funcom that they are mistaken.
Revenue in the third quarter of 2008 (Q308) is
expected to be between $16 million and
$20 million The dominating revenue stream will be
subscription revenues for the Age of Conan game.
Funcom revenues in Q208 were $13 milion, up
from $1.6 million in Q207, mainly due to box
revenues from the launch of the Age of Conan
game.
The revenue in the Q308 will depend on the key
success factors; customer acquisition and
retention rate. Based on the development after
launch of these factors, revenues are expected to
be between TUSD 16.000 and TUSD 20.000. The
dominating revenue stream will be subscription
revenues for the Age of Conan game.
Read the reports from a year ago. Now think about how much AoC is bringing in now. Then think about how the development costs have changed. They don't have 350 development staff. Most of those people have nothing to do with development and fewer still are working on AOC. AoC is a done deal there probably aren't 30 people working on developmant full time now. AoC is neither their primary income nor their primary expense. Most of the costs associated with the launch of the game were spread over the first six months of the game. They're paid for. If AoC isn't turning a modest profit by the end of the year I'd be very much surprised. If it isn't they'll just shut it down and move on to other projects. If AoC has succeeded it would have become their primary source of income. It didn't so it isn't. It's that simple.
Not sure what you want me to see from the reports a year ago, you say you expect them to lose money in Q3 but make it in Q4 what do you think is going to change in that time? neither has launch costs they were in Q2, Q3 will get decent sub revenue because July and to a lesser extent august had large numbers of subs. They isn't the case for Q4. This is why I said we will know the future of the company in november. If Q3 without launch costs made a profit then all is probably well but if they make a loss they they are screwed. I can't see how you think they are going to make a loss in Q3 but be fine and I certainly can't see how you expect Q4 to be better than Q3 when it's likely the revenue will drop by 10 million.
They of course also didn't have a 20 mill short term loan to pay off last year.
Many of the other jobs in funcom will pay more than the game devs, ie buisness and marketing people more than 100k each. the report says they have 291 staff not including customer service people. It's irrelevent weather these people are working on AoC, or the secret world or other projects, if they have 300+ peoples wages to make they are going to have large expences.
I don't know what to tell you if after my previous post you still don't think AoC is their primary income after they say it 3 times in their report. Their revenue for the entirity of 2007 was 4 million USD. their revenue for just 1/4th of 2008 was 3 times that because of the AoC launch. Without AoC their revenue is no where near enough to pay their staff costs alone.
I think too many people are assuming the 'costs' are going to go down significantly. You have to remember that just for bandwidth and server maintenance will cost funcom about $7 per person per month. Bandwidth costs are huge for MMORPGs. So while Funcom doesn't have the advertising expenses it had in the 2nd quarter, it is going to have much more in other areas. ( bandwidth and customer service).
So comparing 2nd quarter to 3rd quarter we can expect these changes -
1. No more boxes sold, which accounted for 8M in 2Q
2. Huge decrease in advertising costs
3. Huge increase in bandwidth and customer service costs
Also,I don't know if I can explain this well enough.. people sometimes don't get it. In the 2nd quarter, Funcom showed a loss of 7.2M.. but their cashflow decreased by 16M... cashflow is a significant number
The easy way to look at it
Cash at end of quarter = 32M
Cashflow experienced during 2nd quarter= -16M
It's pretty easy to see that the 32M is going to be eaten up in two more quarters (6 months). Funcom also had 22M in short term debt at the end of the second quarter, that money must also be repayed really soon. (less than 2 years from when it was borrowed)
And one more number to correct some people. Funcom really isn't making anything from it's other games. Look at the numbers above.. we are talking 16m and 8M and 22M. The total SALES brought in by all other funcom games was .8M.. and that was sales, not profits, Funcom has to pay bandwidth on AO players just like AOC players.
Noggy, I am going to disagree with you though. There isn't going to be a bright spot on the 3Q numbers from July/Aug subscriptions. That 415k was from June 30th, not August 15th. Total Revenues from subscriptions in the 3rd quarter is going to be about 9M add another .8M from other games and another 1M from box sales, you are are looking at less than 11M in total Revenues.
I don't think that is necessarly disagreeing with me, I don't belive the Q3 results are going to be a bright spot, I don't belive they are going to hit their revenue targets, I don't belive they are going to make a profit in Q3. I just think that Q4 is certainly going to be worse than Q3.
Weather you think that the 415k was from June 30th or August 14th it's almost certainly the case that July + Aug + Sep total subscriptions will be far higher than Oct + Nov + Dec total subscriptions.
Personally I'm conflicted on the 415k number, my inital feeling was that it related to June 30th however I've seen someone post an e-mail where they e-mailed funcom investor relations asking for clarification and was told it to be August 14th. Of course there is no guarentee the e-mail was real nore that the information was accurate. So now I sway towards it being august 14th but that it is a massivly massaged number including people who had canceled but still had time left, people on buddykeys etc.
It's also the case that august 14th is near the end of a subscription period. So really the 415k number related to more like July 20th, anyone who canceled since then would still have time left untill a week after Aug 14th.