14 DAY TRIAL // When it was launched last year, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures stirred things up quite a little, and, as a result, Funcom saw a nice income boost. It proved to be an interesting massively multiplayer online role-playing title, with quite a few new ideas and it featured some pretty impressive graphics as well that turned a lot of heads towards it. But it seems like the game didn't manage to become a long-time commitment with players and was more of a one-night stand. It did well at the beginning, but it just lacked that addictive sensation.
In its July-September earnings report released this week, Funcom revealed that it saw a revenue decline from the $18.1 million that it had in the same period last year down to $5.69 million. If the company managed a $3.8-million profit in 2008 for this quarter, this year, it lost $9.64 million. The company doesn't see any miraculous recovery for the rest of the fiscal year, and predicts that the fourth-quarter earnings will be roughly the same as the ones in the July-September period. Funcom doesn't expect to make more than four or five million dollars in revenues in the October-December time slot.
So, the company finds itself in need of good marketing ideas and good products to go with them. The first glimmer of hope for Funcom is the Age of Conan expansion that the company predicts it will release before the first half of 2010 ends. Along with the money it expects to generate from Rise of the Godslayer, the Asian-flavored expansion, the Norwegian developer also received a $270,000 grant from the Norwegian Film Fund to design and develop "an Xtreme sports" MMOG.
But the company, unfortunately, had no details regarding the one title that people were actually looking forward to. The Secret World MMORPG had already been delayed by "some months" when the company decided to relocate some of its staff to the more low-cost location of Montreal. The game announces to have quite a bit in common with AoC, as it promises some interesting ideas, nice graphics and, hopefully, an interesting gameplay as well.