At the Norwegian publisher Funcom, there is a breath of fresh air. But the MMORPGs are aging, new games are needed: The open world survival game Conan Exiles is where they are pinning their hopes.
Creditors grant a deadline, but MMORPGs are aging, revenues are dwindling
Things looked bleak at Funcom, but now there is a bit of light. After the creditors relented and agreed to a restructuring of the debt, they present the quarterly figures from Q4/2015.
Not much happened in that quarter. Main sources of income continue to be the aging MMORPGs The Secret World, Age of Conan, and Anarchy Online. The clock is ticking. As with every financial report, the message from Norway is: As they age, these pillars are crumbling away. Overall, revenues are declining. In Q4 2015, they made $400,000 less revenue than in Q4 2014. They are now at $2.537 million.
The monthly operating expenses have been gradually reduced. However, extraordinary items came up, such as the fine from the tax authorities, which caused expenses in the second half of 2015 to rise overall.
In retrospect, one can probably check off that quarter, as not much happened. More exciting are the ideas for Funcom’s future in 2016 and beyond. It is clear: Funcom no longer sees its future in MMORPGs.
That is why they want to enter the new genre with the Buy2Play title Conan Exiles
The plans are to fully focus on “Open World Survival.” With the game Conan Exiles, they want to succeed and benefit from old virtues. Conan Exiles is set to release on PC in summer 2016, followed by Xbox One and Playstation 4. Conan Exiles will adopt a “Buy2Play”/”Premium” business model.
In the survival genre, games like H1Z1, Rust, Ark, or DayZ have already proven to be very popular genres, without “the big players.” Funcom wants to enter this genre, seeing itself at an advantage because they:
- have MMORPG experience – which is in demand in the genre
- own the rights to brands like Conan that fit well into the genre
- possess strong multiplayer technology
- and have shown with The Park how well they can work with streamers, who are important for the genre
“Small” game planned with The Secret World as a backdrop?
For the future, alongside the “key title” Conan Exiles, they also foresee a release of 2 other “smaller” games that are based on IPs like The Secret World or Age of Conan. In 2017, they plan to send another “innovative” game into Early Access, which will deal with topics like eSports or virtual reality.
This new corporate strategy is meant to work in a way that they plan a large, expensive title each year (this time it is Conan Exiles). At the same time, they want to release smaller titles for constant income, which should cover the innovation costs and benefit from the established IPs and the developed technology. Last year, they brought out “The Park” as the first game under this new strategy and were quite satisfied with it.
To implement the new strategy, they need capital between $5 and $10 million. They plan to obtain this through a stock issue. Details will be released later.
Mein MMO says: The “trend genre” survival – perhaps they are a year or two too late. That Ark succeeded so well last year was a surprise for many. At that time, the “survival” hype was already considered yesterday’s trend. Too many games of this genre did not go beyond an interesting premise. But Funcom indeed has good arguments.
H1Z1 argued similarly back then: We are an MMORPG studio, the genre benefits from it, we will rock it. However, today, H1Z1 is also considered one of the games that have languished in early access rather than blossomed there.
