Funcom Q2 report - revenues decrease

[gcustoms]

Of course. What may come as a surprise - or not, if you read last year's annual report - is that FC apparently expects the game to die faster than it does. Just goes to show that, in allocating their resources, they clearly underestimate the potential of AoC (while overestimating the potential of TSW). In other words: sure AoC is an old game with a troubled historical record, and thus its potential is limited. But you could do more with it than FC are willing to do.

If Funcom wanted to do anything with it there's a simple way they could realistically triple the population overnight, and that is to leverage the power of big Youtube channels.

[twinklez3]

If Funcom wanted to do anything with it there's a simple way they could realistically triple the population overnight, and that is to leverage the power of big Youtube channels.

You can't ignore the root cause of why people left the game. Otherwise, any influx of customers will not be retained.

[Roddam]

You can't ignore the root cause of why people left the game. Otherwise, any influx of customers will not be retained.

If you asked 10 different people what the root cause was, you would probably get 10 different answers.

[Kurt2013]

If you asked 10 different people what the root cause was, you would probably get 10 different answers.

This depends a lot on how you ask and how well you yourself understand your product. Just that statement is soundsing too much like a lazy excuse to do nothing.

Also in aoc there is a whole bunch of fairly easy accessable "wrongs" with a lot of consent in the community that they are wrong. The solutions on how to fix these wrongs might vary a lot, but there can be more than one solution to a problem as long as there is a proper discussion and communication.

[Rathothis]

Q1/2015 report is out:
http://cdn.funcom.com/investor/2015/...Q15_Report.pdf

Q1/15: USD 2,772k
Q4/14: USD 2,939k
Q3/14: USD 2,651k
Q2/14: USD 3,190k [TSW Tokyo update]
Q1/14: USD 3,836k
Q4/13: USD 4,270k
Q3/13: USD 5,336k
Q2/13: USD 5,465k
Q1/13: USD 6,338k
Q4/12: USD 7,786k
Q3/12: USD 10,963k [TSW launched]
Q2/12: USD 2,557k


A few notes:

* Large-scale MMOs (TSW, AoC and AO) account for virtually all of FC's revenues (see Note 14 - FtP games, i.e. Lego, contributed only USD 38k).
* Cost savings compared to Q1/14 were USD 1.1 million.

[Slith]

Revenues in 1Q15 are USD 2,772 thousand
compared to USD 3,836 thousand in 1Q14
following a gradual decrease in sales from the
current Live Games

"I just can't keep up with the day-to-days of TSW and AoC while doing this other thing - it's more work than one person can do. TSW has been going from strength to strength lately - all of the live games have - and my moving off is actually more of a consequence of that success - Joel Bylos

https://forums.thesecretworld.com/sh...=1#post1840031

I don't know guys... something doesn't add up..

[Rathothis]

https://forums.thesecretworld.com/sh...=1#post1840031

I don't know guys... something doesn't add up..

Well one thing you need to bear in mind with b2p games like TSW is deferred billings. With a subscription-based game, revenues are distributed over the length of the sub. But with a b2p game. revenues from box sales are recognized over the estimated customer life. This makes it really hard to tell how much money TSW makes them at this point in time, or how well the item shop is received by players.

One thing I'm wondering about though - as a listed company, how long can they keep JB on a top secret mega project without running afoul of mandatory publication requirements? Still waiting for them to announce that they convinced the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (or someone else with too much money) to fund AoC2

[gcustoms]

You can't ignore the root cause of why people left the game. Otherwise, any influx of customers will not be retained.

Still, most of those problems are gone. and if you ask a lot of gamers about "Age of Conan" they'll say "what's that?" because Funcom doesn't seem to care about the game generating new interest.

[twinklez3]

Still, most of those problems are gone. and if you ask a lot of gamers about "Age of Conan" they'll say "what's that?" because Funcom doesn't seem to care about the game generating new interest.

You can't retain players in a theme park game system without constantly releasing new iterations of new gear and dungeon tiers. At launch the problem was lack of content. Similarly, today it's lack of new content.

[krippa]

Still, most of those problems are gone. and if you ask a lot of gamers about "Age of Conan" they'll say "what's that?" because Funcom doesn't seem to care about the game generating new interest.

i disagree.

*bland static leveling zones that consist of nothing but "kill x of this" and "collect y of that". after tortage the leveling experience is terrible

*broken/halfassed game systems - broken guild renown system, poorly made murder system and sieges that were just quickly slopped together

*mediocre content - horse racing anyone? shrines of bori? sieges?

*bugs that still haven't been fixed (some from launch) - invisible horse, armor clipping, floating sword, when you die from fire/electric fatality your skin doesn't reset, ranger 1 shot bug, settings not saving, missing mountains in purple lotus swamp, and missing cages in grasslands, lootbox bug, minigame signup bug, jhebbal sag group bug, necro/demo pet bug etc. etc.

*no theorycrafting - all classes have about 2 cookie cutter builds and very few different playstyles. there aren't a lot of gear options, you get stuck with stats that funcom gives you on highest tier of pve/pvp armor. crafting revamp was supposed to change this but who knows when that will come out.

*poor optimization - game doesn't run well on newer graphics cards, etc.

no point in advertising aoc until they overhaul large parts of the game.