Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Funcom Suffering Financially

Funcom’s stock, while riding high for a bit after the initial release of Age of Conan (and much hype surrounding it’s number of boxes shipped), is either ‘plummeting drastically’ or ‘resettling back down again’ depending on if your cup is half full or empty.

While it’s normal for investors to be excited over the possible release of a potential WoW killer, once they realize that isn’t going to happen, it all kinda goes back to normal. In the case of Funcom, their stock had kinda petered along at around $25 before AoC went into full swing (with various peaks during the announcement of the IP etc), and has basically dropped back off to that point now. I’m not really a financial expert, here … I did, however, actually try and research the dips and peaks instead of just retyping what someone else figured out, so throw me a bone.

STOCK CHARTS, WOO!

January 2006 (not shown above to keep the chart a readable size, click the above link if curious) saw a steady climb up, when they announced that they were bringing in SpeedTree to help develop AoC. Some must have seen this is more concrete proof of the game’s viability, and the stock jumped up a bit over the next few days.

April 2007 saw Eidos entering the scene, and the official beta starting.

The biggest drop was on August 8th, where the release date for AoC was officially pushed back, and many people speculated that the game itself was being cancelled altogether.

Jan 2008 saw a less drastic drop, when release was pushed back 'another 8 weeks', but came back up within a month or so.

Since the release, though, the stock has been steadily falling back to 'the going rate'. Whether or not it continues to fall is the big question, but I'm not a psychic, and Miss Cleo has yet to return my calls.

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