Star Citizen Breaking News

[DemonInvestor]

Might also not be a good point in time to try to getting rid of the whole thing, as most big publishers have quite a few financial problems currently. So i don't think their investors would be to happy of them buying a risky project, that would in itself instantly garner bad media, with CRoberts selling towards his proclaimed evil publishers. But in the end it's all the matter of how much financial potential you see in CIG. And to be frank, people put a lot of money into total idiotic investments - sometimes even for rational reasony if you reread why bank managers told you that you "had to dance to the music" with some bubbles.

@Derek aren't Publishers themselves looking at such projects as venture capital and therefore demanding high returns - meaning at least thrice the money they put in?

[dsmart]

That's a really interesting read.

Thing is, why take the Private Equity investment before going to the publishers to try and sell CIG?

Didn't you not notice that they barely had $14M in the bank end of 2017? Obviously they need cash pretty darn quickly.

[dsmart]

The "1-year runway" is to get the project in a position where someone would want to buy it. The thing is, as Derek implies,  there's not gonna be some big industry player wanting to buy a game built on the crowdfunding premise that the big labels won't support a cool space game: even if the damn thing worked, all a big label would get would be grief for ruining the vision of an already-blind man. CR's best hope is someone like Amazon, with tons of cash, an interest in getting into the market, and having a proprietary platform involved, so they can't see how broken things really are.

I still don't see it happening.

I can't imagine any mainstream publisher getting involved in a company that's already pre-sold over half their "on paper" valuation. Why would they? And what would be in it for them when they know they have to deliver product that's already paid for, and money croberts and his minions already got and blew through?

That's why they went to dark money; then got someone like Dan to babysit it.

[dsmart]

@Derek aren't Publishers themselves looking at such projects as venture capital and therefore demanding high returns - meaning at least thrice the money they put in?

No. Publishers don't operate or think like investors. That's why some have investors for that.

[Greggy_D]

No one or company is buying CIG for $100M+. 

[Judge_dolly_OG]

I can't imagine any mainstream publisher getting involved in a company that's already pre-sold over half their "on paper" valuation. Why would they? And what would be in it for them when they know they have to deliver product that's already paid for, and money croberts and his minions already got and blew through?

That's why they went to dark money; then got someone like Dan to babysit it.

The investors must be expecting for it to be sold or Squander 42 to be a big success though, why else would they invest 46 mil in this shit show?

As has been put forward before, is the new focus on S42 to get the company so it looks like they might release some sort of game some time soon^TM or are they actually expecting the game to be released and get their return then? Having that Dan guy on board seems to point to the fact that they want to sell the company, given his involvement with Oculus.... Good luck with that. But yeah, good luck with releasing anything with Roberts at the helm either.

But then again if Roberts can convince whales to part with thousands of dollars for jpegs, maybe he can convince billionaires to part with 46 million on an outside shot at breaking into the games industry, all bets are off with this madness.

Except the bet that S42/SC will be finished.. or any good, I'd put good money on that.

[dsmart]

The investors must be expecting for it to be sold or Squander 42 to be a big success though, why else would they invest 46 mil in this shit show?

Why do people put money into scams, failed investments etc? Investors see some sort of opportunity to make money. Clearly, after looking at their books and seeing that they're not profitable, Chris and his cronies obviously sold them on the millions they claim they are going to make with SQ42.

Having that Dan guy on board seems to point to the fact that they want to sell the company, given his involvement with Oculus....

Dan represents the investors, not CIG. So he obviously sees that worse case scenario, his clients could make some money if it succeeds, or lose if it doesn't. Investors do that.

The most hilarious thing to me is that Chris had over $200M in free money, and couldn't finish a SINGLE game; yet people seriously believe he's actually going to do so in another 18 months just because he now has a $46M buffer on top of whatever it is they are making.

Whether or not they release SQ42 Beta in 2020 is largely irrelevant. The issue is that better AAA games flamed out immediately on release, but he thinks that SQ42 is going to be this huge game that's totally going to add millions of more Dollars. I just don't see it. Even if SQ42 automagically sold 1 million units over time, it's still not going to be profitable. Aside from the fact that very few games sell more than 500K units - ever. And once EP1 fails, it's basically going to kill EP2 and EP3.

This is why I keep laughing at those fools who believe that the $46M is totally for marketing. They are operating at a loss each month, yet they claim to be looking to hire more people. So where exactly is that money coming from?

[Slapmeandcallmegurl]

I feel the names on the cast list alone will rake in a significant number of sales for Squadron. You don't need to do much but splash Gary Oldman, Mark Strong, Gillian Anderson, Andy Serkis, John Rhys Davies, Mark goddam Hamil FFS, etc, onto a few billboards and TV screens.

They've still got millions of dollars, especially after the latest rounds of sales, on hand, but now have a marketing budget as well. Good work.

Just need the game now...

Edit: How could I forget Ms Gardiner in that list as well. Sorry. What a cast!

[dsmart]

A cast doesn't make a game good. It's almost as if you're not a gamer, or just try to see the positive in every permutation.

From what we've seen of Star Citizen, there is absolutely nothing that says SQ42, built with the same tech, assets etc, will be good or bad. And a cast of big names isn't going to change that.

In 18 months if they make Beta, we'll see if they're going to release it as early access or just do internal Evocati testing until the final release. Whatever they do, the minute it gets any form of release, it will live or die right there.

[Slapmeandcallmegurl]

Of course a cast doesn't make a game good but a game doesn't need to be good to shift a load of copies. Plenty of people will be happy to try a new game with Luke Skywalker in or Skully or Gimli or whoever else they like.

Whether the game is any good or not I have no idea but whether the game will sell enough to provide some meaningful finance, I think yes. Like I said, splash those names with a few fancy looking explosions and a battle against an Idris or something and you'll rustle up enough interest.

One thing the game will probably do very well is visuals and set pieces that look amazing. Easy to make an attractive advert or two with cryengine...ermmm, lumberyard. It's worked before after all with the Kickstarter video.

But yes I am a gamer, even played TF2 competitively for years. Playing a medic who main calls the plays for his team in leagues and cups and stuff was great fun.

[dsmart]

yeah but you're talking about marketing. However, again, as we've seen time and time again, millions in marketing money still won't mean squat if the game is crap - regardless of who is in it. Mass Effect Andromeda, COD Infinite War, Star Wars Battlefront, Assassin's Creed Unity, Aliens Colonial Marines etc

The biggest issue is that most backers who would be interested in SQ42, are already entitled to it via pre-orders. That's a massive problem right off the bat. So to make any kind of decent money, they have to market it to a whole new set of gamers who would be remotely interested in a single player on-rails space combat game. They're going to be targeting gamers who would be remotely interested in Rebel Galaxy Outlaw and X4 Foundations which are so much more than what SQ42 is likely to offer. In fact, X4 Foundations, like my own UCCE game, has less than 200K units on Steam according to SteamSpy (X4, UCCE). Elite Dangerous, which is more on par with Star Citizen, has over 1M owners on Steam.

There is no way that I can see SQ42 making any kind of dent for their finances to recover. And even with talk of a console version, it is still going to be an uphill battle because space combat games simply aren't that popular. It's why Star Citizen became a runaway funding success due to this mindset that 'nobody else is going to do this". And then croberts squandered that goodwill and has basically destroyed the project.

[Slapmeandcallmegurl]

That's what I'm talking about. Fans of Oldman, Anderson, Hamil, Davies, Strong, Gardiner...et al, may well be tempted into a fun sci-fi game if they see it advertised. The cast may...I stress the word 'may', bring in a different audience.

They may have saturated the market but I don't believe it's sold every copy it can. I see plenty of posts around suggesting a lot of people are waiting on a game to be finished before handing over cash as well.

Never underestimate the Powah of Celebrity! There are many an idiot drawn to a famous face or name and compelled to spend money.

[Judge_dolly_OG]

That's what I'm talking about. Fans of Oldman, Anderson, Hamil, Davies, Strong, Gardiner...et al, may well be tempted into a fun sci-fi game if they see it advertised. The cast may...I stress the word 'may', bring in a different audience.

They may have saturated the market but I don't believe it's sold every copy it can. I see plenty of posts around suggesting a lot of people are waiting on a game to be finished before handing over cash as well.

Never underestimate the Powah of Celebrity! There are many an idiot drawn to a famous face or name and compelled to spend money.

Only if the game is good, otherwise SC's terrible reputation outside the bubble will continue and they will not sell anywhere near the copies they need to. Even if the game is good they still may not sell enough copies.

It is not looking like the game is going to be any good, not by 2020 especially.

[krylite]

Even as a sci-fi fan in the 90's, after I wasn't impressed all that much seeing WC II on a friend's computer, I'd never bothered buying the subsequent WC's and even hearing about Hamill in WC3 didn't motivate me enough to try it. Instead I got Elite 2: Frontier, X-wing (which impressed me far more as a 3d space-combat sim than wc2) , Elite 3:FFE, and the first X:BTF by the end of the 90's. (I also did get a copy of Battlecruiser 3000 AD, but some things interfered in life where I lost track of where I put it after moving around... ) I'm just one example, but today on youtube the cutscenes with genre actors are posted for most games where anyone can see them without having to grind through the games to see them..

[krylite]

They're going to be targeting gamers who would be remotely interested in Rebel Galaxy Outlaw and X4 Foundations which are so much more than what SQ42 is likely to offer. In fact, X4 Foundations, like my own UCCE game, has less than 200K units on Steam according to SteamSpy (X4, UCCE). Elite Dangerous, which is more on par with Star Citizen, has over 1M owners on Steam.

It's why Star Citizen became a runaway funding success due to this mindset that 'nobody else is going to do this". And then croberts squandered that goodwill and has basically destroyed the project.

Great points about how the other current genre games are doing. X4, even NMS has already effectively eclipsed or pre-empted touted features of the vapor marketed expectations that CIG and CR tossed around like confetti year after year. It's lol funny to see how they keep claiming innovation when X4, NMS and Elite (on various other fronts) has already been there done that as released games as the years pass by. This holiday season saw the X4 cycle already deflate so how would a SQ42 be even approaching X4's success in its sorry state. My 2c guess is the investor somehow in delusion came to believe SQ42 or whatever CIG doles out ,if ever, can approach a buying spike under a bunch of manipulated false hype and expectations (like NMS' infamous release) which seem unlikely as you've said CR has already squandered years of goodwill and burned millions. Maybe CIG would even attempt to "offer" the SC fooledback whales and shillizens some p2w or more SC vapor "incentives" to repay(!) for SQ42 again. Add to that all the shifty cig shilling in social media and some boneheaded articles like the recent Newsweek SC "report" farce.