Frontier Developments Share Discussion Threads

[mortal1ty] 24/11/2023 14:10

Makes you wonder wtf FDEV are thinking.

Anecdotally looking at one of Team17s games Hell Let Loose. Developed by Black Matter studios which has like 50 employees.

Amazingly successful game. Meanwhile Frontier and their 800 employees (?) just churning out flops.

[yankhanson] 24/11/2023 11:56

Steam peak player count in launch week for Realms of Ruin and two comparators.

Sega's Total War Warhammer III
166,754

Frontier's F1 Manager 2022
25,575

Frontier's Warhammer Realms of Ruin
1,572

That last number is not a typo.

[mortal1ty] 24/11/2023 10:58

Lack of base building.

3 simple classes, leads to a basic rock - paper - scissor attack.

Enemy randomly spawning behind lines.

Units held in reserve doing nothing when attacked (as you mention).

Some what simplistic terrain doesn't really contribute to tactics.

....

Shame, seems like graphics, audio, and multiplayer generally seem good. You can build your own maps etc. But the strategy part of the game itself is missing.

[lyndley] 24/11/2023 10:47

Just looking at reviews, it's this sort of thing that I feel is the problem (from a Steam review) :

"While I was playing and microing between 2 separate engagements a powerful enemy unit attacked my third group of warriors. As I was distracted I did not notice this fact until I happened to glance at the map and saw a giant red triangle next to my strong point. curious I panned the camera up there to witness one of my heroes and one of my ranged units torn apart in two separate engagements all while my prosecutors stood there helplessly. This was a frustrating experience because together my army would have been capable of winning the fight but they were defeated in detail."

Units in RTS games normally have some degree of autonomy, if RoR doesn't have that I can see it being a frustrating experience for the player.

This sort of thing is then often contrasted against the premium price Frontier is asking for.

[nrholland] 24/11/2023 10:00

Me too, although I took a bigger hit. Was a pure punt though - some you win, some you lose ...

[john09] 24/11/2023 09:23

Yep I took a 20p hit here and sold earlier in the week

Without that new game doing well there’s no immediate reason for holding I fear

[phowdo] 24/11/2023 09:19

TM17 putting in all time lows and down 40% today after a shocking trading update.

[yankhanson] 21/11/2023 19:04

Thanks 74tom.

The VG Insights owners number is now down to 16K - probably factoring in the drop in daily players. 40% since launch. These analytics will probably take a week from launch to stabilise.

And re your average ratings sub 80%, Steam and Metacritic are now 69% and still falling.

[74tom] 21/11/2023 13:56

Lifetime - based on Total War 3 unit sales of 2.7m. Sell side consensus was apparently £25m.

VG insights says PC downloads for the first 4 days are just shy of 20k units, even assuming similar for PS5 & Xbox only gets to £3m. With average ratings sub 80% and an ultra competitive gaming landscape, they'll be lucky to reach £10-15m IMO.

[sgtwhisper] 21/11/2023 13:41

Reviews for Warhammer are going down a similar path to F1M. I got in when it hit 200s but jumped straight back out when real reviews started flowing.
This company has tried cutting too many corners on its latest releases, comments are almost identical in their concerns. There are thousands of phone app games out there that have more content to them than these two bags of sh*t.
Customers will turn their backs on FD altogether & many will now wait for reviews on future releases rather than pre-ordering. With an aging portfolio and nothing decent coming through to replace them, I wonder how long FD can continue pretending they will be ok financially.

CEO needs to go imo! Feels like he thinks he's playing Frontier Development Manager as if it's a computer game itself, mind blowing how incompetent they are atm.

I think this will re-test 190s over next few weeks as the shoddy numbers come in & wouldn't be suprised if it tested below.
P.s. I'm not a shorter. Just giving an opinion from a gamers POV.

[cirlbunting1] 21/11/2023 13:30

I hold a position here - so i dont think we will be at the same party hehe!

[yankhanson] 21/11/2023 11:33

74tom, re Jeffries expected sales of 2.7m units and £31-70m revenues, was that FY2024, or lifetime, or something else?

[cirlbunting1] 21/11/2023 08:31

Keep doing you. I dont mind ur posts tbh.

[yankhanson] 20/11/2023 23:12

74tom, those Realms of Ruin costs were disclosed in the last investor call. hxxps://www.frontier.co.uk/investors . 45:12 £20m minimum dev costs, 47:56 £3-4m launch costs.

Robertox87, I too am sick of everyone here talking about me. It's the same at parties. Hey, what's a guy to do??

[robertox87] 20/11/2023 21:59

Every time I come on here, all I see is people talking about Yankhanson. Seriously, it's pathetic. I'm sure he'd just disappear if you ignored him, but you've turned him into a minor celebrity by going on and on and on about him. So much for not feeding the troll.

[hamhamham1] 20/11/2023 18:16

"This has gone from a £85m revenue business, making £16m EBITDA, and £35m cash in the back.

To a £108m revenue business, making a £9m EBITDA loss."

The EBITDA loss is coz of buying the Canadian company and write downs (paper shuffling the latter).
They said in the results that cash in the bank would have increased if they didn't buy the company.

From rns...

· Operating profit in FY23 was negatively impacted by £28.7 million of non-cash intangible asset impairment and accelerated amortisation charge...

Frontier continues to be well capitalised, with a cash balance at the end of FY23 (on 31 May 2023) of £28.3 million and £24.8 million as at the end of August 2023. The net cash outflow of £10.4 million in FY23 was after outflows of £10.9 million for the acquisition of Complex and £3.0 million for the purchase of shares in the Employee Benefit Trust. Cash would have grown in FY23 if the acquisition and share purchases are disregarded...


THATS...

Cash would have grown in FY23 if the acquisition and share purchases are disregarded...

[74tom] 20/11/2023 16:13

Where have they disclosed that it cost £23m to develop?!

SCSW also used the Total War sales as justification for a second pump here having tried at £4+ back in the spring. They quoted Jeffries who stated that they expected sales of 2.7m units and £31-70m revenues. Zero mention of flop risk of course.

[yankhanson] 20/11/2023 13:17

74tom, "Why price it so high?". Really good question.

The answer can be seen where FDEV's broker Liberum forecasts huge Realms of Ruin earnings on comparison with the leading existing Warhammer RTS "Total War" at the same high price - £50.

Total War is from an RTS-expert developer, and top-name publisher Sega. Massive game, massive seller. On RTS games, Frontier's development experience is zero, and its publishing experience is one Foundry title which bombed. Despite this Frontier mistook its simplistic and shallow Realms of Ruin as like Total war, like mistaking tiddlywinks for Chess. And so put the game at completely the wrong price point. Then cemented the error by raising the price by 10% on launch day.

Frontier should have priced their game at £20 like other simple Warhammer games. This would still have no chance of meeting the game's ridiculous £30m Y1 earnings forecast, but would have better mitigated the losses on the game's £23m costs.

[mortal1ty] 20/11/2023 11:57

hxxps://www.frontier.co.uk/investors/financial-information

Crazy to look at the financials over the past 5 years.

This has gone from a £85m revenue business, making £16m EBITDA, and £35m cash in the back.

To a £108m revenue business, making a £9m EBITDA loss.

Just goes to show how growth at all costs doesn't work. Bloated the cost base. Made a bunch of games that didn't sell well.

[mortal1ty] 20/11/2023 11:42

Well I think this will probably be the last of the Frontier flops.

Ever since David Braben completely lost the plot and started signing projects left and right.

[74tom] 20/11/2023 10:34

Yep. Priced like a AAA game, plays like an indie. Why price it so high? Steam rating now down to 71% on 459 reviews, if that trend continues it's heading sub 60%. It just makes no sense pricing it that high...

[mortal1ty] 20/11/2023 08:21

The share price will tell us how well the game is doing.

The big investors will be all over the download statistics etc. A bit like the last F1 manager game which sunk the share price well before the company came out and said it was performing poorly.