i am no market analyst but net cash 8.9mil with no overdraft sounds like a decent place to be to me!.**
Hopefully Frontier are able to use the technology in planet coaster in elite dangerous, (and vice versa) to mean the more games they create the more "stuff" they get to pad out all their games which will make them more cost efficient.
** that being said I suppose it does depend on the number of people in the company
50 people pulling an average wage of say 30k plus material expenses and property rental costs will soon eat through money I suppose so they need to keep at it
(I take it there is no way of knowing how many developers they have working on ED and on PC in total is there?)
Mad Mike,
The annual report contains the answers to all your questions. <- link. It's dry reading of course, but has interesting bits.
I'm not opening the link to look again (I'll read the 2016 one though). But IIRC as of 2015 reporting, there were 128 staff working on ED out of 248 or so. Since PC is in development that means about 128 working on Planet Coaster as well. Although probably that is not 100% accurate, close enough for a forum post and without reviewing the annual report again.
Cash in the bank is nice, yes. However, cash-flow is king. It seems FD have drawn from savings since the last annual report- but that could be accounting jiggery-pokery or my memory might be slightly off on the 2015 total. In any event it is part of transitioning from working for publishers to having more than one franchise/ game to sell to keep cash flow more steady. During development of ED they ran a loss as they ramped down some contract development for other studios without any product to replace the income until ED was released.
Cash flow is king because if costs exceed receipts then savings must be spent. That is not where any business wants to be although some have cyclical +/- trends and other complications.
I agree PC looks great and
the last coaster game FD made was still making money after 10-years. So PC made a lot of sense for franchise #2, and could have a greater effect on the books than ED (which is a bit niche).
ED "paid back" the cost of its development, which FD invested into Planet Coaster. ED has since been sustained on its own cash flow but importantly has sustained development of PC as well.
I would love to see ED be able to "keep" more of its own revenue once PC launches and starts bringing in buckets of money. Or, even better, for PC to 'pay back ED' for some of its development costs in turn. The result to hire a few more staff for targeted ED development activities. This is of course nonsense from a management point of view; I am just thinking as a huge ED fan that has never played a coaster game I would love all ED revenue to go back to ED, some PC revenue to go towards ED, etc.
End of the day, healthy FD with several successful franchises is a better FD with better prospect to continue developing ED than a "one trick pony"; for a variety of boring reasons. [up]
And, don't forget, as soon as PC is released (or sooner), FD will announce a third major "franchise". My bet is a Zoo Tycoon type game (just for fun), but only FD knows for sure.:x
