q2 2015 – MMO Fallout

Funcom has released their second quarter earnings for 2015 and it doesn’t take a genius to know that the results are not good, because the geniuses have already been telling us for the past month. Revenues at the company are down, from $3.19 million over the same period last year to $2.65 million this quarter. While we knew that Lego Minifigures Online was not a financial success, Funcom notes in its report that the company was forced to write off $2.9 million in the second quarter on “impairment charges,” a fancier term for worthless assets.

In response to its dwindling sales, equity, and cash in the bank, Funcom has announced a new development strategy focused on developing small, experimental, low risk titles that can be released at a rate of at least one per year with one larger game in production at all times. The new plan also includes upgrading the Dreamworld engine to integrate it with third parties (licensing), as well as making further use of in-house properties.

The first product of this new experiment is “The Park,” an experimental single player game set in the horror theme park from The Secret World and set for release in October. Check out the trailer below.

(Source: Funcom)

Star Vault has released their financial results for the second quarter of 2015 and the news isn’t all bad.

Net sales for the quarter dropped ten thousand dollars over last quarter, from sixty eight thousand down to fifty eight thousand. While net profit is still in the red, it has been steadily climbing for the past five quarters straight. In the second quarter, net profit increased from a loss of sixty one thousand to a loss of forty one thousand.

While profits increased and sales decreased, the report notes that the number of subscribers remains unchanged for the second quarter. In his note, CEO Henrik Nystrom expects Mortal Online to launch on Steam this month.

In order to be as ready as possible for the Steam launch, we built another starting position players – a queuing system. This and the start position is now completed. Moreover, we want to use Steam Achievements, which is different gaming sites where players can receive an award by doing different things in the game. In this way, players can show what they managed to achieve, which is also visible to other players on Steam. It’s a great way for others to see what you can do in Mortal Online, as well as the players can see that you play Mortal Online on Steam. We estimate that we will have these elements in place and to launch Mortal Online on Steam in August 2015. We have now compiled Steam Achievements, and the final polish on the level of detail.

(Source: Aktie Torget)