Turbine Lands $30 Million in Venture Capital 19
Gamasutra has word that MMOG maker Turbine, developer of AC, AC2, DDO, and MEO, has succeeded in raising another round of venture capital for current and future projects. From the article: "The company has recently been strengthening its publishing and rights hold on its internally-developed products. It assumed complete control of development and publishing on Middle Earth Online, after finalizing a deal with Tolkien Enterprises and VU Games, and also took full control of Asheron's Call from Microsoft following the company's first round of financing. Of Turbine's major new MMO worlds, Dungeons & Dragons Online is due to launch later in 2005, and The Lord Of The Rings: Middle Earth Online will launch some time in 2006."
So Turbine is to blame! (Score:3, Funny)
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For those still confused (Score:1, Informative)
AC = Asheron's Call
DDO = Dungeons & Dragons Online
MEO = Middle Earth Online
A MMOG, of course, is a Massively Multiplayer Online Game.
Turbine's Poor Track Record (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not so sure how Turbine managed to get so much funding, given how Ascheron's Call 2 has a pretty dismal showing in the MMORPG market -- if you take a look at the the lastest MMORPG charts [mmogchart.com], you can see that although Ascheron's Call 1 peaked at 120,000 subscribers, Ascheron's Call 2 only peaked at ~50,000 subscribers, and dropped precipitously after May 2003.
Just as my two cents, I'd prefer to see funding go to the makers of Anarchy Online, Planetside, or Eve Online, which are also indie, but have a much better subscriber base & track record.
Re:Turbine's Poor Track Record (Score:1)
The licenses are what draw customers.
I know I'd rather play Dragonlance Online than Dragon Saga VII Online.
Maybe that's just me?
Re:Turbine's Poor Track Record (Score:1)
rylin: The licenses are what draw customers.
I'm positive that licensing draws customers in traditional non-MMORPG games -- KOTOR I & II are a great example of this.
However, the MMORPG market is totally different -- Star Wars Galaxies, the Matrix Online, and The Sims Online are all examples of MMORPGs that have powerful licenses behind them, but are relatively unsucessful when compared to Lineage, Everquest, or Dark Age of Camelot, which aren't backed by big-name licenses.
Going back to Turbine,
Re:Turbine's Poor Track Record (Score:1, Insightful)
This logic may apply to Middle Earth Online. It has been published in book form and varios movies have been made derived from it. There was even a pen and paper RPG for it I think.
I think the problem with developing interactive entertainment from movies or books is that the story is already to
Re:Turbine's Poor Track Record (Score:2)
Re:Turbine's Poor Track Record (Score:3, Interesting)
As for Turbine, the real question to ask isn't how many subscribers did the game have, but what was the return on investment for the game? We know that games like WoW and EQ make money hand over fist, and that the bulk of their expenses in the long term roughly scale with the number of users (there may be an economy of scale at work, making a large number of subscribers even more profitable, though). MMOGs also have an advantage over non-served
Re:Turbine's Poor Track Record (Score:2)
Re:Turbine's Poor Track Record (Score:2)
Pathetic Waste of Money (Score:2)
DND Online better be damn perfect or the players will go back to paper.
The expansion pack of AC2 has not sold any copies at best buy they've been sitting there doing nothing. And server pop's are still in the 200's and from a players perspective when I did play if you was not already level 55+ then you have nobody to play with. The game was stupid to make thin
Re:Pathetic Waste of Money (Score:1)
Definitely agree with you. AC was probably acquired very cheaply, since it was likely to get killed by Microsoft anyways.
To a lesser degree, WoW doesn't do the "assistance" game very well either. There are no qualified methods within the game's mechanics to sweeten the prospect of helping lower-level characters.
City of Heroes has the "exemplar" and sid
Nice... (Score:3, Insightful)
Bruce
Re:Nice... (Score:1)
Re:Nice... (Score:2)
Turbine is banking on the Asheron Call name for part of it because they are releaseing expansion packs and currently are in the middle of a heavy advertisement cam
Re:Nice... (Score:2)
Re:Nice... (Score:2)
They're obscenely profitable. The money doesn't go to the good games, it goes to the games which sell well. Generally those are one and the same, but in the case of strong franchises sometimes they differ. AD&D is such a case; there are others (witness the Risk family of software atrocities.)
Nice try (Score:2)
Wasn't on their rep but what they are licensed too (Score:2)
This is an investment based on the perceived viability of these two titles regardless of who produces them. Considering that Turbine raised this money indicates they blew through the previous 25m received less than two years ago.
Apparently Turbine has a very good package they show VCs, most likely relying on some