Tag: finances

Star Vault Q3 Financial Reports


Star Vault today released their third quarterly report for 2011, and the results are rather similar to last quarter. For the first time, Star Vault has reported a loss in subscribers, even though sales of the game client itself are up. In the usual manner, I’ve included the fun facts for you all to enjoy. Do bear in mind that there may be some inconsistencies and poor grammar, as my source is the poor translation of Google from a Swedish document.

  • Star Vault’s Q3 net sales amounted to 706,404 SEK, but the company’s net earnings remains in the red (-720,790 SEK)
  • Subscriber numbers declined in the third quarter, which Star Vault attributes to the delay of Territory Control.
  • Sales of the game itself increased in Q3 over Q2.
  • Territory Control hopes to bring in more players who “really take gaming seriously.” (their words, not mine)
  • Star Vault is still working with OnLegends to bring Mortal Online to a wider audience.
  • Star Vault’s gross profit for the first nine months was 4.3 million SEK ($622 thousand USD).
  • Administrative Expenses ran up 1.3 million while research and development gobbled up 2.1 million.

And because you were waiting for this part of the quarterly update:

Program to reduce our costs are developing well and we expect and that the outcome of this will reflected fully in January 2012. With our current cost structure, we consider that further approximately 500 players to achieve break-even, a goal that we are due to the delay of further expansion expected to achieve first quarter of 2012.

And an interesting note on why Star Vault has been in the red:

In June 2011 signed an agreement with Star Vault LeKool (Chinese publisher) when the fast-growing gaming market for English-language games in China is one such market that the company could not reach before. Along with LeKool open this opportunity up and Mortal Online expands thus into this interesting market. The business model means that the cost of operation increases to a much lower rate than revenues, when number of players increases. Star Vault will continually monitor price developments in the industry to offer players market prices. In the longer term, the Star Vault to develop and sell new games.

Funcom Q3 2011 Finances


Because most of you probably don’t care to read up on it yourself, MMO Fallout is committed to bringing you the important information from each quarter’s financial reports. Yesterday, Funcom revealed its third quarter finances to investors, and there is plenty to boast about. Revenues increased 55% in the third quarter compared to the second, but Funcom expects the fervor to somewhat die out, and has predicted a loss in revenue in the upcoming fourth quarter due to a foreseen diminished interest in Age of Conan.

The Secret World is “progressing well,” and the team is putting the final touches on squashing bugs, improving optimization, and balancing content. The game is still set for an April 2012 launch. Funcom’s final figures are rather low due to the development costs of The Secret World and a number of free to play games. In their “target scenario,” The Secret World will sell 30% more clients, and a healthy retention is around 490,000 subscribers. In their “Conan prediction,” Funcom expects only slightly better retention than Age of Conan (280,000) and one million sales in the first year.

Some more interesting information:

  • The cost of hosting Age of Conan since launch has been 18 million, excluding bandwidth costs.
  • The Secret World will cost approximately 4-8 million over the same time span, reducing costs greatly.

Funcom Q2 2011 Finances


It’s August, and that can only mean plenty of Q2 financial reports to read. Funcom has released its financial reports for the second quarter of 2011, with just enough time to factor in Age of Conan: Unchained. Here are some points of interest:

  • Age of Conan: Unchained has more than doubled revenue for the title, although we already knew that.
  • Bloodline Champions is being localized in Russia.
  • Funcom believes that the Secret World will be a less risky launch, given the stability of its engine (Dreamworld 2.0)
  • Age of Conan, Anarchy Online, and Bloodline Champions are all bringing positive cash flow, but the development costs for The Secret World, Pets Vs Monsters, Fashion Week, and My Kingdom are putting serious hurt on Funcom’s money.
  • Funcom sees The Secret World as selling more in its first year than Age of Conan did, as well as significantly better retention.
  • A “healthy retention” for The Secret World is considered 490,000 subscribers. “Conan-like scenario” is listed as 280,000 subscribers.
Unfortunately, unlike NCsoft, Funcom does not offer as detailed sales figures on a per-game basis or per-region. So Funcom is bleeding money, but such an outcome is expected with so many projects on the table.

Star Vault Publishes Q2 2011 Finances


Star Vault has published their results for the second quarter of 2011. You can read the report in its native Swedish, or poorly translated by Google. For the sake of convenience, I will post some of the more important information here:

  • Mortal Online has seen an increase in subscriptions and box purchases since Q1.
  • In order to reduce costs, the board of directors has cancelled the liquidity guarantee.
  • According to Henrik Nystrom, a rights issue resulted in enough income to pay off earlier loans.
  • Mortal Online needs 500 more subscribers to achieve “break-even.”
  • Star Vault has partnered with Lekool to publish Mortal Online in Asia (we already knew that)
Although Mortal Online is still not breaking even, Star Vault continues to inch toward that goal with what, despite what some people would like you to believe, appears to be growing in terms of sales and subscribers. Who knows? Mortal Online could be a real surprise comeback.

Mortal Online Doing A Little Better: Costs Cut


Nothing to lose your head over. The last time we took a look at Star Vault’s finances, the company announced that:

With the new cost structure, the Board expects that an additional approximately 1500 players to achieve break-even, a goal that we hope to achieve in the second quarter of 2011.

Well the Q1 financial reports are out, and it appears that although Mortal Online’s subscribers have remained mostly stagnant, the cost of running business has gone down significantly.

 The sale of licenses in the first quarter of 2011 remained largely unchanged compared to the fourth quarter of 2010.

The Board of Star Vault decided, in order to reduce its costs, to cancel the liquidity guarantee. Star Vaults last day of trading with market maker was on 29 April 2011 and the company’s first trading liquidity without being 2 May 2011.

With our current cost structure, the Board expects that an additional approximately 1000 players to achieve break-even, a goal that we hope to achieve during the second quarter of 2011.

If you don’t understand what a liquidity guarantee is, that’s okay, I don’t fully understand it either. What is important is that Star Vault requires less income to break even, meaning Mortal Online’s long term viability just became that much better.

You can read the entire release here.