General / Off-Topic Frontier financial interim results

[Stewart_]

THIS Quote by DB is the most interesting thing here. It makes me looking forward to the next years regarding the further development of Elite (which hopefully benefits from that decision).

I'm wondering if this is to help flatten out peaks and troughs in FDevs income / sales figures. If FDev can reduce the time between purchasable content / new games, their income will flatten out , making the company healthier.

The next significant bump in their incoming will be JW, which is 6 or so months away.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

I know, the ruling for the MTD is friday.

And let's not forget the other gems out there, like: https://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/settlements/11087/costner-failed-movie.html

Ascendant Pictures? http://www.ascendantpictures.com/team.html

And let's not forget that Oscar-Award-Winning Wing Commander movie... http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=wingcommander.htm

A stunning $18,421,941 loss.

Now I actually hope to be proven wrong - but there is definitely a track record here.

 

[Kubicide]

OMG Thank goodness the majority of the posters here aren't looking after my financials! These aren't great numbers folks; okay maybe, but certainly not "stellar", "fantastic", "great". And if anything they show declines.

To the point of Elite's contribution versus their other titles, we don't know which ones are contributing the most profit - no one outside of FDev knows this. So feel free to speculate, wish and hope away. But the reality is Elite may have the worst contribution. We just don't know the facts. But Beyond sends a bad signal because if the Elite franchise was the strongest cash contributor / most profitable then you'd see a lot more being invested - a lot more than the limited maintenance work allocated for 2018. It seems to be in cash-cow mode.

But then again the core fan-base does seem to have unlimited imagination so dream on!

 

[frostypaw]

We hear this a lot, but claims like this are never backed up with solid evidence!

Oh there is none, the teams are quite separate and stable. Look at the username, look at their other posts.

 

[Stewart_]

Oh there is none, the teams are quite separate and stable. Look at the username, look at their other posts.

Yes. Exactly! People post these claims that originate from their asses!

 

[Ambroza]

OMG Thank goodness the majority of the posters here aren't looking after my financials! These aren't great numbers folks; okay maybe, but certainly not "stellar", "fantastic", "great". And if anything they show declines.

To the point of Elite's contribution versus their other titles, we don't know which ones are contributing the most profit - no one outside of FDev knows this. So feel free to speculate, wish and hope away. But the reality is Elite may have the worst contribution. We just don't know the facts. But Beyond sends a bad signal because if the Elite franchise was the strongest cash contributor / most profitable then you'd see a lot more being invested - a lot more than the limited maintenance work allocated for 2018. It seems to be in cash-cow mode.

But then again the core fan-base does seem to have unlimited imagination so dream on!

Limited maintenance work would be keeping the servers alive, and possibly patching bugs (but that isn't a requirement). What we're actually getting are major re-works and additions to the game.

 

[Kubicide]

Limited maintenance work would be keeping the servers alive, and possibly patching bugs (but that isn't a requirement). What we're actually getting are major re-works and additions to the game.

Define major. You would have a point only if they had announced an upcoming "Season 2" or next expansion for $$ or some other release that required extensive major development effort. But they haven't. So...

 

[frostypaw]

You would have a point only if they had announced an upcoming "Season 2" or next expansion for $$ or some other release that required extensive development effort. But they haven't. So...

...therefore it's impossible that it exists? There's no chance at all that they want players to focus on what is happening now rather than just hype themselves into another frenzy of wild expectations rather than try and control that process and keep announcements reasonably short scale?

 

[Kubicide]

...therefore it's impossible that it exists? There's no chance at all that they want players to focus on what is happening now rather than just hype themselves into another frenzy of wild expectations rather than try and control that process and keep announcements reasonably short scale?

Keep the imagination flowing! That's all that can really be said. Hope.

 

[frostypaw]

Keep the imagination flowing! That's all that can really be said. Hope.

Not really no. Look at the sales and player figures - fat lady's not even in the venue, let alone the dressing room or warming her vocal cords.

 

[GraXXoR]

I get the joke, but the Steam stats are actually looking better than they ever have before. We recently broke an all time record for average concurrent players over a 30 day period in January.

I was hanging around Ray Gateway yesterday and saw more new players in haulers, asps adders and so on than I have ever seen before.

 

[Lee Archer]

X4: Foundations, no VR, full economy, some space legs. 2018
X3: Rebirth. VR, Limited economy, some space legs 2017
Star Citizen. VR, full economy, full RPG. 2019
Elite Dangerous Beyond, VR, Ersatz economy, Astronomically quasi accurate Galaxy. 2018

 

[frostypaw]

If you want to add some facts to our banter here
Watch a game being developed in real time,

LOL worst example ever. Lots of fluff, nothing happening. I'm afraid you're not getting what you think there, just a very long advert

 

[BaronDeKalb]

They just come to catch a Glimpse of the ole Baron

But seriously apart from the game being a work of art, it's the community, from the awesome work of Obsidian to the great people at Lave, and the zany great times of the Turner, even the wand of the Potter, there is something for all here

 

[krylite]

People, please don't call SC a competition at the moment. That is insulting to less known, but much successful projects as games going after space crowd (Dual Universe? IB? And that's just few of them). SC is more of money vacuum cleaner which removes money from people and they aren't able to buy any other games. As game though it is so far away from release....Simply no.

Exactly, the bet between ED vs. SC is already over imo. ED's real competition is either X4 or the other new independents. SC ptu already breaks up, stutters, and crashes with more than a few players online in their single star system and only appears smooth in their heavily edited trailers or shilled yt streamers. CR has already overly doubled down on the wrong engine choice, overindulged on predatory and dubious marketing & ad tactics, (the latest of which now you have to subscribe and pay for their new newsletter even if you were already a long time backer!) and it'll be very interesting to see a full and truthful balance statement for SC/cig-arrets like the one of ED of this thread i.e. whatever happened to over 120 $million of whalebacked money over the past two+ years.

 

[Mugur]

So I read (from a link provided in another thread) the whole statement, but that's not the point. I'm glad that things are working ok for Frontier as a company, but my interest is in Elite Dangerous. Of course, one thing is directly related to the other one, but not entirely. What happens with ED really depends whether ED is profitable by itself on the long term. It's risk versus reward here, investment versus potential profit. If Frontier decides that investing big in a new add-on, DLC, even new Elite is worth it, we'll all be dancing hand in hand around the table...

But if their projected ROI will look dim... Beyond, the paintshop and Good Bye! Maybe some cheap updates, but no atmo landings, cities, oceans, jungles, space legs.

At this point we know only that 3.25 million copies were sold (this means EVERY SKU on all 4 platforms ever, being base game, base + Horizon, Horizon only, Deluxe Edition, CMDR Edition, DVD, etc.). Don't forget that there were massively discounted sales most of the time in the past year. So we don't really know how many CMDRs are in existence, how may with Horizon versus base game only and how many launched the game in the past 30 days. Those are the real numbers and Frontier decision (in progress or already done) is based on those numbers. It is as simply as that. Nobody will invest 1 million $$$ if the projected outcome will be 800,000 only.

Speaking of "the other space sim", yes, I think it's another discussion entirely. Not worth talking at this point IMHO. Deja vu if you followed the Starlancer / Freelancer story. And even in the best case scenario for SC, you will be able to do "everything" on the 10 systems available at launch... No, thanks!

That leaves Elite the only game of its kind. And that makes me worry to no end, because I want more of it. I like most of what I already have, but I definitely want more.

 

[babelfisch]

Define major. You would have a point only if they had announced an upcoming "Season 2" or next expansion for $$ or some other release that required extensive major development effort. But they haven't. So...

Just because you aren't interested in the features provided by Beyond it doesn't mean they aren't there. And please let me remind you, the initial claim was that the game is in maintenance mode, which is still wrong even if you don't think Beyond provides any major features. Maintenance mode = keep the servers running and maybe fix a bug or two.

 

[Ambroza]

Define major. You would have a point only if they had announced an upcoming "Season 2" or next expansion for $$ or some other release that required extensive major development effort. But they haven't. So...

I mean things like reworking core mechanics like mining and exploration. New ships. Overhauled planetary tech. None of that is "maintenance", and requires quite a lot of development effort combined.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

OMG Thank goodness the majority of the posters here aren't looking after my financials! These aren't great numbers folks; okay maybe, but certainly not "stellar", "fantastic", "great". And if anything they show declines.

What exactly declines?

FD has been posting consistently good numbers year after year.

What exactly would have to happen to convince you that FD is good and ED is good financially?

SC scam level money?

 

[Dad Rock]

"Elite Dangerous, which launched in December 2014, continues to expand and develop, with an increasing level of story driven content."

This is the bit that gets me excited. Something that would bring the ED universe to life! As for the rest, I suppose it looks good, but then again I'm no accountant here's to many more years of Elite: Dangerous. Long may it prosper.