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:

http://www.newsweb.no/newsweb/search.do?messageId=244087 

Originally posted by Aceundor

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:

http://www.newsweb.no/newsweb/search.do?messageId=244087 

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?

Originally posted by AmazingAvery

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.  

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.

Originally posted by noggy1980

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. 

Originally posted by nihce

 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.

Originally posted by Aceundor

Originally posted by AmazingAvery

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.  

 

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...

Originally posted by arctarus

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...

 

 

 

 

 

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

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. 

Originally posted by Elsabolts

 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

 

 

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...

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.

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