14 DAY TRIAL // Realtime Worlds has revealed some interesting statistics about its struggling massively multiplayer online third person shooter All-Points Bulletin. The company is currently under administration following poor financial results and project management.
Apparently, All-Points Bulletin has around 130,000 registered users and that the average players is present four hours a day in the game's world.
The current administrator of the company did not reveal the number of active players, it is quite clear that, following the tepid reviews, APB did not manage to win the hearts of many gamers.
The management remains positive as administrator Paul Dounis said that, “These are healthy numbers and reflect positively on APB as a ongoing concern.
“They prove this is a very enjoyable game, which is shown by the average player daily playtime and an ARPPU (Average Revenue per Paying User) that is highest of any game out there.”
The customers who actually pay for All-Points Bulletin are giving the struggling developer around 28 dollars per month, buying either game time and user to user marketplace trading.
Surprisingly enough, MyWorld, the outfit's other more socially oriented project, is still under development and may even catch the spring 2011 release date initially announced.
Realtime Worlds recently went under administration, that is filed for bankruptcy in layman's terms. All-Points Bulletin was a very expensive project that did not manage to return the investment.
What is really unfortunate in this affair is that Realtime Worlds was an independent studios that was extremely well-funded. Its failure will probably force the industry, considering the current economic climate, to avoid situations like these.
This is extremely bad news for independent developers who wanted to try their hands at bigger projects. It is really hard to believe that big publishers will risk funding such endeavors after Realtime World's failure.