Pinned straw:
After listening to @Strawman talk about Playside on the Motley Fool pod machine, I thought I’d check back in on progress.
At the AGM management indicated that FY25 will be a year of consolidation and building for the next wave of bigger and better future titles. A revenue guidance of $62m to $68m (in-line with FY24) was given for FY25. So how do they get there?
In June, the forward 12 month WFH book was at $28.8m.
With no new contracts or extensions announced to date, it has to be assumed that this remains at the same value. At the AGM, there was the indication of active leads after a quiet period in the industry, but this is yet to play out.
This leaves $33.2m from Original IP that are being released this year and mobile.
Current titles expected to be live in FY25:
Kill Knight - PC, Xbox, PS, Switch
Released 2nd October - RRP$20.00 - Developed and published by Playside
Receiving positive reviews, but in a niche genre overall sales volumes wouldn’t be expected to be massive. As indicated in the AGM, this title was more of an exercise in releasing a title across multiple platforms simultaneously.
https://www.metacritic.com/game/kill-knight/
KILL KNIGHT Review | Bytesized
Current PC download estimates from SteamDB.
Dumb Ways to Die - Free For All - Meta Quest - Developed by Playside - Revenue Share (& licence fees?)
Released - 6th November - RRP $29.99
The Dumb Ways To Die franchise expands across to the Meta Quest platform with a VR party game. So far it seems well received but downloads and users are quite low at this point. A new DLC with additional mini games has recently come out which may help increase awareness of the game.
Meta Store Reviews:
Trying NOT To Die In DUMB WAYS In VR! - Dumb Ways Free For All - YouTube
https://cdn-api.markitdigital.com/apiman-gateway/ASX/asx-research/1.0/file/2924-02690123-3A622133
Shattered - Meta Quest - Developed by Playside - Revenue Share
Released - 4th December - RRP $29.99
Shattered is a Mixed Reality puzzle thriller that was released without much fanfare. It is getting a solid reception for pushing mixed reality forward which is a positive for future titles and work with Meta.
Meta Store Reviews:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15ueyuO_XYg
https://cdn-api.markitdigital.com/apiman-gateway/ASX/asx-research/1.0/file/2924-02601238-3A607700
Shattered [Meta Quest 3] | REVIEW - Use a Potion!
Age of Darkness: Final Stand - PC - Developed by Playside
Full Release - 15th January 2025 - RRP $40.00
Age of Darkness will get its full release in early 2025 since coming out in early access in October 2021. Multiplayer should help give the game a bit of a bump in overall downloads as that was a major complaint about the game in early access.
Previously it was announced as published by Team 17 but now shows up on the Steam Store profile as published by Playside, which means there will be a higher revenue share from sales, however there would have been some cost in parting ways with Team 17.
Steam DB stats. - Compare after release to get an indication number of new downloads
Thrive: Heavy Lies the Crown - PC - Published by Playside
Full Release Q2 2025 - RRP $40.00
The city builder currently in Early Access since 7th of November will be Playside Publishings first full release once it comes out in Q2. So far reviews have been mixed, but trending toward more positive as the developers respond to the feedback they are getting.
Review summary from Steam Store
Dynasty of the Sands - PC - Published by Playside
Early Access - Early 2025 - RRP - TBC
Beanland - PC - Let's not talk about that.
Mobile
Playsides latest mobile titles seem to be performing ok, but still have a long way to go before they reach the status of Animal Warfare. Currently with less impact for mobile revenue from the Dumb Ways titles (Dumb Ways to Survive - Netflix - Licence fees? Announcement) I expect mobile to be less of a contributor to the Original IP revenue for FY25.
Summary from Sensor Tower.
Overall, Playside is maintaining a high level of quality for the games they are developing and publishing and generally are well received. The next 6 months will be telling on how they market the existing titles and the upcoming titles for FY26. (Mouse and GoT). Original IP revenue was $17.66m at H1FY24 and dropped off to $12.6m for H2FY24. As half the titles are only expected to be released in the second half, revenue for H1FY25 will likely sit somewhere in the middle of these two numbers.
The other approach for estimating direct revenue would be to use estimates from the number of reviews. There are quite a few articles that cover this such as this one.
Using Steam reviews to estimate sales
and tools which have been developed of the basis of these number ranges such as this
IMPRESS – Your toolkit for indie game publishing!
While they would not be directly comparable across platforms and Meta Quest headsets a similar principle could be applied. A number of around 60 downloads per review seems to be reasonable for the purposes of estimation.
Does anyone know if the revenue figures that Playside announce are before or after steam / app store %? Reading through the annual report I can't exactly determine it.
