Profile: ZigiRage
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• • Gaute Godager RESIGNED!!!

  • So what will you do to salvage yours, since not only are you A.) Repeating something you could have put in the official thread, but also B.) Added a gagillion exclamations to show just how important your thoughts were?

     

    You've got me confused with OP. I didn't start the thread, I just replied to it.

    Also I am not in a business of selling my opinions. They are in a business of making and selling games. Their reputation matters. My reputation as a gamer is irrelevant.

  • Posted: 9/17/08 8:28 PM
    Age of Conan
• • Gaute Godager RESIGNED!!!

  •  

    They are using him as a scapegoat. I remember listening to an interview with (around 6 months before release) where he was asked what makes games fail. He listed 3 or 4 things, and one of them was bugs.

    
    I don't remember when was the last time I played a mmo which didn't have bugs and disbalances at launch. However most mmorpgs didn't have this much hype tied to it. And amount of bugs AoC had was ridiculous. Just look at patch notes.

    
    They are acting too arrogant, and doing too little to salvage their reputation. They can now polish it to the hell and back, people won't come back. No real incentive for them to do so.

     

     

  • Posted: 9/17/08 8:21 PM
    Age of Conan
• • THE BEST DAY EVER!!! 5 REASONS WHY AOC IS BACK ON TOP!

  • Originally posted by ILOVEFUNCOM
    

    1 Funcom now has the best game director available for the company. 2 Funcom stock is now on the rise and will soon come back to prelaunch levels. 3 The PvP patch will get old players back and fill up the servers during non primetime hours 4 The increased population will result in better forum reviews resulting in an increase in the playerbase until the expansions and Xbox360 releases 5 Finishing the PvP patch will now result in the last battle of balancing meaning AoC is that much closer to be finished!

    This is a joke right? Well it made me laugh so I guess it is.

    Oh and No 2 is pure win. I am sure you are going to follow up on your prediction by buying 100k$ of stock.

  • Posted: 9/17/08 2:10 PM
    Age of Conan
• • So we can't talk about stock price anymore?

  • Originally posted by Azrile
    

     

    And you missed a point I made early on

    They LOST money and had 16M in negative cash flow  WHEN they had 800k box sales and 415k subscribers.    Yes, you are right, they could cut costs and be cash flow neutral..... if they had 800k box sales and 415k subscribers in September. 

    For anyone who wonders why the stock price/financials matter..    Now you know why the pvp patch that was promised in June still hasn't been released, they have few devs still working on the game.

     

    I'll join back on this discussion when they publish their q3 report. No need to say I disagree.

    However, their development progress is horrible. The most interesting thing for me is DX10. I mostly wanted AoC because of it. Yet it wasn't in the game.

    In their report, it's listed as a long term focus. In my view, long term is 1 year at least. By the time they finish it and polish it, every major game is going to be DX10.

  • Posted: 9/15/08 1:51 PM
    Age of Conan
• • So we can't talk about stock price anymore?

  • Originally posted by Azrile
    

    This thread is just full of bad information

    1.  Funcom is not in good shape.  They spent 50M to produce and launch AOC ( 22M they borrowed in February).  They only made 20% of box sales, which is 8M dollars.  The rest goes to retailers and distributers.  So basically they paid 50M to generate 8M.

    3. Funcom LOST 8M in the 2nd quarter, despite the sales they got from boxes.  They also had about -15M in cashflow and currently only have enough cash for about 6 more months of operation.

    4.  Funcom currently has 32M cash assets, and is in debt about 30M.   23M of that is short term debt which has to be repayed in the next 2 years.  Seeing how Funcom lost 8M in the second quarter, it makes it difficult to see where they are going to get that 23M from.

    5.  All the major stock indexs are down about 5% over the past 2 years.  Funcom's stock is down 50% over the same period... and is down a whopping 80% since it's high in may.   When stock markets have 'bad' days.. it's usually 2-3%....  Funcom has had about 10 days in the past month where it's stock has dropped more than 10% and it hasn't had two positive days in a row since June.

    6.  Even with 800k box sales and 400k subscribers in the 2nd quarter.. Funcom LOST 8M dollars.  How much bigger will that loss be when they don't have 800k box sales.

     

     

    I agree that they are not in a great condition, but they are not in as bad situation as you claim.
    They have 21.8M in short term debt, but they have 32M cash to cover it, 18M trade debtors (so let's say 10% is written off, so it's ~16M). That short term debt isn't nearly as bad, as you made it look.

    
    Also their operating expenses will be much lower than in Q2, which was 15m. It'll be more along the lines of 5M. Their revenues will be less but their expenses will be less also.

    
    And it's clear that they plan to re-use the technology developed in AoC for other projects, so saying that 50M was invested just in AoC isn't accurate.

    I wouldn't want to be in their shoes, but saying that they are going to be bankrupt is rushed.

  • Posted: 9/14/08 11:03 AM
    Age of Conan