Forum Topics PLY PLY Current Catalogue Review

Pinned straw:

Added 3 months ago

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. 

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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.

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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.

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https://www.metacritic.com/game/kill-knight/

KILL KNIGHT Review | Bytesized

Current PC download estimates from SteamDB.

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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:

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https://www.meta.com/en-gb/experiences/dumb-ways-free-for-all/7763282913797845/?srsltid=AfmBOop6Bt5XlcLJUCh6bDtEGAhmv7VxGCLtbkWbZc8MfOv2yFsH3UJ4

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:

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https://www.meta.com/en-gb/experiences/shattered/5816339365118691/?srsltid=AfmBOop-2jlayczzVge5g42mFQe0e8lVhLrJQ-BkcluLZoO9ts3oRYGh

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.

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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

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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.

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Review summary from Steam Store

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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.

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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.

Strawman
Added 2 months ago

This is great @Bradbury! Thanks

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Bradbury
Added 2 months ago

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.

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Clio
Added 2 months ago

I can't speak for Playside specifically, but as someone who has had to account for this sort of revenue stream (Apple, GooglePlay, AmazonKDP, etc) to the ATO and ABS for over a decade, then what's paid into a "publisher's" hands is the sum after platform percentage is deducted. A publisher never sees a credit note with the total amount, then on a separate line the platform % deducted. You just get paid what's due to you after they've extracted their cut.

On that basis, Playside's revenue figures ought to reflect the amounts they receive into their hands, which is ex-platform fees.

OTOH, IMPRESS's figures might be based on full cost to the consumer, so you'd need to adjust for whatever the % return from each platform is. For instance, for e-books, KDP's percentage paid to publisher is theoretically 70% minus the sending fee, which is about 2%. So roughly 68% of retail price goes to the publisher. Apple is similar, as is Kobo, while GooglePlay is less and I think Nook (US only) and others are less again. Or perhaps IPRESS does the platform adjustment automatically (?)

18

Bradbury
Added 2 months ago

Thanks @Clio that was my assumption however could be a significantly different number if it was the other way around.

The IMPRESS number accounts for the platform fees and also adjusts for discounts etc.

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