Frontier Developments Share Discussion Threads

[yankhanson] 18/12/2018 18:59

mula1, the major bad news you missed is the latest financials. Big drops in revenue, net income, EPS, profit and operating income cost of income hxxps://i.ibb.co/tDBwssj/FDEV.png .

[endion] 18/12/2018 17:54

Braben is certainly aware of the other store's charges, it was through one of his tweets that I learned of it. Whether this affects where they sell games in the future... we'll just have to wait and see.

[czeck] 18/12/2018 17:01

@mula1, do you ever watch the news..? Lol

[mula1] 18/12/2018 16:36

@Nimbo1, In regards to "Well I’ve bought another load in the 7.50’s. on a medium term view this will likely at least double. By that I mean within 3 years-5 years. Nice risk reward IMO." Don't you think it will double before 3/5 years - it was £18 earlier this year with no major bad news to make it drop this far!

[yankhanson] 18/12/2018 14:46

What China news is awaited? FD is already selling their games in China. They have to sell on such a low margin e.g. recently JWE at £7 equiv., that it seems unlikely FD are going to invest effort there. Chinese gaming is dominated by cheap social mobile games and Frontier have produced nothing in that area since their last attempt four years back flopped and hit the accounts with heavy impairments.

[mark4231] 18/12/2018 14:21

No news, I would think it's far too early to hear about anything with other stores - however, I would expect to see something mentioned about what is happening in general in the industry with respect to stores and how it might affect (improve!) profits in the future. It's a shame something similar couldn't happen for the consoles.

[czeck] 18/12/2018 13:15

BTW, any news on Frontier going for Epic Game Store vs Steam? More revenues for Developers.

[nimbo1] 18/12/2018 12:38

Afraid that isn’t in the companies control as that is Chinese political stuff - but it looks like q1 next year they’ll have their regulatory body established and licensing again. Beginning to look better but who knows

[lastoneout] 18/12/2018 12:35

And hopefully China news in March? Or am I being too hopeful there?

[nimbo1] 18/12/2018 12:06

Trading update early - mid jan

[mark4231] 18/12/2018 12:05

I agree, it feels like a long way back up although I'm personally expecting a trading update/first half results to provide the oxygen. DYOR.

[nimbo1] 18/12/2018 12:04

Well I’ve bought another load in the 7.50’s. on a medium term view this will likely at least double. By that I mean within 3 years-5 years. Nice risk reward IMO.

[czeck] 18/12/2018 10:04

Still the road back to £10, £12 or even £18 according to Liberum Capital seems like climbing Everest without oxygen mask.

[mark4231] 18/12/2018 09:12

Thanks for that info isayi9999. I think the top end of analyst estimates was 1.8 million units to the end of next May - so 0.3 to 0.4 million left to go - although most sales of JWE from now to then are likely to be discounted.

[isayi9999] 18/12/2018 08:59

The PS4 / Xbox One Platform Split has been (and this is true for most games in this generation as PS4 is the more popular gaming platform) 70/30%. So you can pencil in around 150k-200k Xbox One sales on top of that. If you assume PC sales at a similar level as both consoles combined. We are probably hovering around 1.4 - 1.5 million JWE sales at the moment.

[mark4231] 18/12/2018 08:42

Thanks TravellingTrader, I had pencilled in between 400K and 600K for PS4 sales. So 544K is good.

When the Steam data came out in July time, it gave PC JWE sales of 500K (at about the same time as FDEV announced 1m total JWE sales) - so I've been working with the idea that PC sales = PS4 + Xbox One sales.

We'll know the actual hard figures fairly soon but I'm comfortable with top end of analyst estimates.

[yankhanson] 18/12/2018 00:14

nimbo1 "in particular the jwe dlc which wasn’t included in analyst forecasts" will make no significant difference. It lasted only one day before falling out of the Steam top 100. hxxp://gametopsellers.com/game/979930/jurassic-world-evolution-cretaceous-dinosaur-pack

[endion] 18/12/2018 00:01

What an insightful game trophy you got there! If Xbox One has done similar numbers, then that would be 1M between them. Id imagine PC has sold more than console considering it is Fdevs usual target audience, but if it matches that then 2m has been done. Not too shabby and above broker forecasts. Will have to wait for a trading update for hard numbers of course.

In other news, shocking how the fall of ASOS triggered a rout in retail/online store stocks. So many were down today, M+S and boohoo among them. Goes to show how one company can affect an entire sector.

[travellingtrader] 17/12/2018 23:16

Using gamstat method.
I have the platinum trophy on jwe PS4. 7079 players have achieved it. 1.3% of people.
7079/0.013 = 544538

So looks like PS4 has sold over 500k

[mark4231] 17/12/2018 22:56

Don't forget first half figures will only go up to the end of November although I'm also optimistic about how the actual trading will compare to expectations. We'll see.

[nimbo1] 17/12/2018 22:49

Thanks mark. there must be a chance they’ll be trading ahead of expectations again in light of the recent ED surge and in particular the jwe dlc which wasn’t included in analyst forecasts. We’ll find out in a few weeks. Have a nice Christmas all.

[yankhanson] 17/12/2018 22:09

Latest ED update has been badly received. So much so that Steam is showing the rare "High Volume of Negative Reviews Detected" alert. The FDEV customer support forum is awash with complaints about defects.

More importantly the number of units it's sold is very low. About 6,000 in this promotion says Steam Spy. That's 10% of the same period of the previous month's promotion which was at a less attractive price.

I don't know why FDEV don't put JWE on discount. If they gave it a 90% price cut like ED, it would surely sell a ton while awareness of the successful film is still high.

[mark4231] 17/12/2018 21:56

ED has consistently been on the front page (top 25) of the global top sellers ever since the launch of the update, and does seem to have risen even higher in the last few hours. The current discount lasts until the 20th at which point I expect the Steam Christmas sale will begin and so almost everything will be on discount then. Nice to see Elite: Dangerous doing so well - even if it is a heavy discount - as I believe the Steam Top Sellers is revenue rather than unit based. It won't be bringing in anything like the revenue of the initial JWE sales but money coming in is money coming in and recruits more potential customers for the next paid DLC. I also notice (and I've noticed this before when one of the games is being promoted) is that JWE and Planet Coaster are higher in the chart than they usually are at full price - P3 and P4 of the UK Top Sellers at the moment. Maybe one FDEV game influencing sales of other FDEV games? Planet Coaster DLC is also out tomorrow.

Yes, I do play Elite: Dangerous although far from an expert as not enough time in life to play (about 150 hours in total, I call it investment research!). The update seems great, it has brought some more life into the universe and fleshed out some of the game play. Improved graphics, more information (the codex), everything a bit more polished. There's a few bugs they need to sort out (sometimes freezes for 30 seconds or so is the main one for me) but overall I'm impressed. It gives me a good feeling they have big plans for the game as they wouldn't have put this much effort into a 'free' update otherwise.

Take a look at hxxps://steamdb.info/app/359320/graphs/ . There's currently a high peak number of people playing Elite: Dangerous via Steam (so ignores consoles and those, like me, who didn't buy Elite: Dangerous via Steam).

Also, someone has found a way to estimate the number of players for PS4 games. I'm hoping they get around to estimated the number of JWE players although it isn't in the list at the moment.

hxxp://gamstat.com/

[nimbo1] 17/12/2018 21:15

Elite dangerous back into top 10 global bestsellers on steam. Whatever was in that update has been very well received.

Mark I believe you are an ED player? Any views?

[shanklin] 17/12/2018 07:29

endion

At the very minimum, it seems unlikely that Steam will be able to maintain their recently revised pricing structure; since Steam do nothing remotely special they are going to have to lower their prices nearer to those of the challenger companies.