Funcom quarterly report reveals Age of Conan performance
Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, MMO industry
We covered the NCsoft quarterly report two days ago; now it's Funcom's turn. Many gamers will be keenly interested to know what the truth of Age of Conan's performance really is, what with nay-sayers taking delight in talking it down and representatives and supporters talking it up. The game is either thriving, or dying on its backside. People are leaving in droves; whole guilds are untouched and continue to play on busy servers. AoC sucks; AoC rules. What do the figures say?As it turns out, we have to distinguish between the report presentation - a colorful package that includes lots of celebratory marketing woo-woo material - and the financial report itself. If one looks at the report presentation as opposed to the financial report, it appears the game sold over 800,000 copies to date and currently (that is, 'per August 14') has 415,000 customers. That many subscribers would certainly be enough to keep the game alive and healthy. But there's a big twist around the corner.
As our readers may remember, Funcom were boasting around 400,000 subscribers back in May. Going by Funcom's own official figures, the game's population is growing slightly rather than shrinking..
We must make the caveat here that there are no server metrics included, making it impossible to assess the performance of any given server over any other. We thus cannot tell whether PvP servers are faring better than PvE, or whether the Culture PvP servers are the disappointment they are claimed to be by some players. Nor, more importantly, are Age of Conan's subscribers categorized by region. We only have the single customer figure to work with. It is therefore possible that Age of Conan could have performed weakly in the US, and strongly in Europe; or vice versa.
Nor, it seems, will we be seeing any server metrics in future; we may even be unable to see subscription numbers. We are only getting them this time because it's the first quarter after AoC's launch:
Funcom will, as previously stated, for marketing and competitive reasons in the future not on a regular basis disclose information about subscriber numbers and also not provide detailed financial guidance. Due to Q208 being the first quarter following the introduction of the Age of Conan game, the Company has decided to provide such information.
Furthermore, there's a possible ambiguity here concerning exactly what period the 415,000 subscribers relates to, which may throw our analysis above off completely. As stated, '415,000 customers per August 14' is the tally from the report presentation. The financial report itself (as opposed to the report presentation) which concerns events up to June 30 of 2008, states 'The game currently has more than 415,000 customers.'
Funcom thus seem to be claiming identical subscriber figures for June 30 and August 14, which strikes us as odd. One possibility is that the report presentation simply means 'per the Q2 2008 report of August 14', but this is merely our own attempt to make sense of what we see in front of us. We do note that if the figure of 415,000 customers really did pertain to August 14, it would contradict Funcom's own decision (see above) not to provide information about subscriber numbers other than for Q2 2008, which (as any investor knows) ends in June.
In related news, Funcom stock has dropped this morning; this is not the first time. We have also received word that the CEO of Funcom has sold 400,000 of his own shares, which represents 18.7% of his outstanding shares and exercisable options.
Some very mixed signals, then, are coming out of Funcom today. If the game really does have 415,000 subscribers right now, that's a healthy enough figure. However, confidence could be higher, the lack of solid figures doesn't help, and the CEO could have picked a far better time to sell off nearly a fifth of his own stock.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
8-15-2008 @ 1:07PM
Hades said...
415 Customers means accounts that are still active, but not how many are still paying. Many of the PVP servers have had 75% - 100% of entire guilds canceling in August, the server forums are barren, instances are barren, and if you follow a lot of the "guild list" links you'll see a ton of them are preparing for Warhammer or WoW.
Unless AOC is a big hit in new markets, I think the next quarterly report is going to show the real effect of how many people have bailed on the game within the first 6 months. I don't know what servers have high populations anymore, but most are low to medium at best.
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8-15-2008 @ 1:12PM
george said...
Funcom has worst quarterly losses in a company's history...
http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=156638
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8-15-2008 @ 1:15PM
george said...
Check this out also.
Funcom CEO sells 18.7% of his shares
http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=156764
Anyone else scared to even play a game while it is on the merge of dying? I sure am...
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8-15-2008 @ 1:20PM
Adronicus said...
When an insider dumps stock following a financial report, the indication is certainly bearish for the company.
I'd also suggest it is common for an MMO to release general numbers guidance to investors. Failure to do so cannot be anything other than negative subscriber growth. When an MMO is growing, we see tons of marketing materials about the numbers. When it is shrinking, we don't see those numbers.
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8-15-2008 @ 1:37PM
Steve_S said...
My subscription finishes August 20th, haven't been in the game for two weeks now.
I bet you won't see numbers for September and November. Or especially after WAR and Wrath come out.
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8-15-2008 @ 2:26PM
crsh said...
Same here, which is incidently also the end of any 3-month subscription after the first "free" 30 days of buying the game at launch - it'd be interesting to see how many folks sub up for a 3-month package instead of a monthly one, perhaps indicating september will be when sub levels drop even lower.
8-15-2008 @ 2:04PM
Slogo said...
It must be twisting the words to make it better than it is.
I vote for 415k subscribers in Q2.
There's no way NO WAY the game has an increasing population. The NA servers are barren wastelands now.
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8-15-2008 @ 3:25PM
BiggDawg said...
If it is a Q2 financial report why would it have information from Q3? The report was published in August but the information is from April to June.
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8-15-2008 @ 3:26PM
rinks said...
Warhammer seems to have the best bet for success in the future (as much as a game can going against WoW). I've been really impressed by what I've seen, and much more eager to play that then I was with Conan.
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8-15-2008 @ 4:58PM
Drifter said...
Age of Conan will become a repeat of Hellgate: London in the series of failed games.
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8-15-2008 @ 6:09PM
Tasogare said...
What are you talking about? They had stellar initial sales but that doesn't mean anything. THey're being extremely sketchy with the sub numbers that they're releasing and those numbers are STILL bad when compared to game box sales. Couple this with overwhelming player dissatisfaction and the fact that the CEO of Funcom sold 18% of his stock...
Something's up and it's not boding well for them. It's kind of crazy to accuse people of being Chicken Little without looking at the facts.
8-15-2008 @ 6:09PM
Tasogare said...
What are you talking about? They had stellar initial sales but that doesn't mean anything. THey're being extremely sketchy with the sub numbers that they're releasing and those numbers are STILL bad when compared to game box sales. Couple this with overwhelming player dissatisfaction and the fact that the CEO of Funcom sold 18% of his stock...
Something's up and it's not boding well for them. It's kind of crazy to accuse people of being Chicken Little without looking at the facts.
8-15-2008 @ 7:04PM
TwistedBishop said...
I'll assume you're addressing me and replied to Drifter by mistake.
To your points:
-They have released very precise active numbers. 415k of people either paying or in their free month.
-Retaining 50% of your box sales is bad? Vanguard retained 16%. Do you assume that WoW has only sold 11 milliion retail copies?
-"Overwhelming player dissastisfaction"? I don't know. Go to any currently running MMO's message board and see how many complaints you find. What I mainly see around here is a lot of FUD and trolling.
-The CEO did sell some of his stock. Executives often do. Why is this cause for alarm now? Oh, right, it's an AoC thread.
8-16-2008 @ 2:04AM
saiya said...
Anyone played this game? any comments on why it is failing?
8-15-2008 @ 5:18PM
TwistedBishop said...
So Funcom launches AoC. It has record sales, has an active subscriber base higher than any MMO out there that isn't named WoW, meets its own guidance for the quarter that takes into account launch-related expenses...and people are still claiming the sky is falling?
That's the internet for you.
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8-16-2008 @ 3:04AM
sebban said...
AoC is failing atm because they launched the game before it was ready. The gameplay itself is solid, the "active melee" is alot of fun IMO, but the game launched with too many bugs, too little content and imbalanced classes.
My sub ended last july, thy have fixed most of the bugs that annoyed me since then, now they just need to add some more content to the lvl 45+ range and they have a solid fun game.
I think I'll go back in 5-6 months and see how the game has evolved.
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8-16-2008 @ 3:08AM
Dan said...
They are just trying to keep their investors in the dark. Obviously, they don't play the game.
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8-17-2008 @ 5:40AM
Tom-AZ said...
The game is dead. No point in even denying it anymore.
At this point, I am so pissed over the lies and deception by Funcom, that I want them to fail. I want the whole company to go bottom up; as a lesson to future gaming companies.
Don't lie to your customers.
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8-17-2008 @ 2:59PM
TwistedBishop said...
Your dislike of a game does not make it dead. With the sort of subscriber numbers they're seeing, they could lose a huge chuck of that 415k number and still be hugely profitable. It's going to be around for a long, long time.
8-17-2008 @ 5:50AM
Tom-AZ said...
For those of you who didn't play this game- Funcome essentially promised the greatest PvP game ever made. A true free for all.
They designed the most pointless PvP system I have ever seen. PvE games have been PvP systems in their duel systems than this game.
Basically. There are 80 levels. After level 35, the quests stop. So your only choice is to grind it out, 30k-60k per level and 100xp-250xp per kill.
Their must bragged about siege system was never finished. They didn't even add the actual towns\walls until 2 months into the game and started working on the rules a month after all. During a siege, the walls are not able to be destroyed and the siege weapons don't work. Also, if you died, you had a 45 minute run from the otherside of the world back to the Siege. Yeah... you gotta run everywhere.
Then, they added jewels that buff your armor\weps etc. Well, they did a recent patch that allows 2 classes to 1 hit anyone in the game.
So lack of content 35-80, lack of Sieges, no Risk vs Reward PvP system, and 1 hitters means a dead game.
My entire Guild signed up. 45 people. We all quit en-mass and actively bash the game on every game and message board. Funcom or Failcom as we call them lied to all of us and sold everyone a game still in Beta because they ran over budget and we don't appreciate it.
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