Age of Conan

The Funcom stock is now even lower than it was during the mini-stock crack around Christmas. It's about the time when big companies like EA shuffles out of their crypt and emerge into the moonlight to prey on weaker gaming companies.

So who do you think would be interested in Funcom's company, or buying them for the sake of getting hold of Age of Conan (and the Anarchy Online and Dreamfall IP)?

I used EA as an example, because I have a feeling they'd be the first to pounce on the chance, but it's not like they'd be the only ones, right?

It won't happen.

Any company that buys Funcom will have to deal with too many issues

1. The company is publicly traded, which means the process will take at least 6 months.  In that time, the new company will have to trust that Funcom can maintain a decent amout of subscribers. 

2. Funcom is in a lot of debt.   Why would a company pay money to buy a company that is in debt, is losing money, and doesn't have a single product that generates a profit.

3.  Developers -  MMORPGs are enormously complicated.  If a new company bought Funcom, they would basically have to keep the current AOC developers.  Look at how well the developers of funcom are doing.. would you really risk your money and think they could turn things around.

When MMORPG's tank and later get bought out.. it's AFTER the game is stable and not bleeding.  If IF IF IF funcom ever gets itemization, seiging and PVP working in the game.. the game might have a chance to be sold off.  But right now, the game is actually deterioriating.   Anarchy Online has a much better chance of being sold than AoC... just because the game is stable, and a new dev team could transition in.  AOC is too broken.

AO, and later AoC might by bought, but there is no way a company would buy Funcom just because of the debt issue

Umm you guys know that stocks don't exactly show the condition of a company, right?

Originally posted by Sylian

Umm you guys know that stocks don't exactly show the condition of a company, right?

So I take it you do not run a business, much less a publically traded one.
 

The stocks tell us something about how costly it'll be to get hold of a majority share in the company. And their stock is über low right now.

If we are lucky SoE will take it over, they can't do any worse than Failcom has.

Originally posted by AranStormah

The stocks tell us something about how costly it'll be to get hold of a majority share in the company. And their stock is über low right now.

Wait 6 months.  Funcom will be trading at $9 or lower. (My 6M est. is $7.50)

Lit

Considering they have gone form $54 to $16 in 2 1/2 months don't think its going to take that long. They are lower today than they have been in the last 52 months.

I say if anyone can turn AOC around Sony can.

We all know the original state of Vanguard ,look at it now ..I play  it and the  game is brilliant.Also they support  games like the Matrix which are even less popular than Vanguard

Yip SOE is there salvation if hypothetically someone would take AOC over :)

Originally posted by bcrankshaw

I say if anyone can turn AOC around Sony can.

We all know the original state of Vanguard ,look at it now ..I play  it and the  game is brilliant.Also they support  games like the Matrix which are even less popular than Vanguard

Yip SOE is there salvation if hypothetically someone would take AOC over :)

AO and Vanguard are two special games..  The development team actually ended up making the game playable 6 months after release.   In other words.. if a new player joined AO and Vanguard 6 months after it was released, they would enjoy the game and stay.  AoC is NOT in that state yet... if a new player joins today, they are no more likely to subscribe after their free month as the players back in June.

Sony will not buy the game in the current state because they would have to count on the current developers to 'fix' the game.  It would take a long time until Sony could get their own developers aquainted with the game enough to fix it.   When the game is fun, and stablized at 50k subscribers is when Sony would buy it.