Well, it's 9:31 A.M., so I think we'll get started. Welcome to the interim financial results. If you, as I mentioned just now, if you can stay on mute, please, until we get to the questions section. Jonny and I will go through a few slides, and then we'll move to questions. So, without further ado, Jonny, I'll pass to you.
Thanks, Alex. So yeah, good morning, everyone. We're gonna rip through these slides, so there's gonna be plenty of time for questions. I know that the interactivity of those questions is normally really good when we get to discuss some of the topics that we'll be going through now. So let's start with H1 FY 2024 financials. We had a good back catalog performance, in particular with our CMS portfolio. I'll talk about that a little bit later on because I think it's gonna be a recurring theme. We do need to acknowledge that revenue for our new games were lower than expected, and again, I'll talk a little bit about that later on. We had an adjusted EBITDA loss, which is a measure of our cash profitability, of GBP 4.9 million.
This was due to lower level of total revenue and an increase in operating costs. Although this was partially offset by a higher gross profit margin. A non-cash amortization and impairment charges resulted in an operating loss before restructuring of GBP 30.8 million, and our cash balance at the end of 30 November was GBP 17.1 million. As of the end of 31 December, this has increased to GBP 19.9 million. Moving on to operations and strategy. In Q4, we confirmed we have pivoted our strategy to focus on the reliability of the CMS genre. Again, hopefully I can talk a lot more about that later on. I think it's, you know, exceedingly important. We have committed to three CMS games across the financial years of 2025, 2026, and 2027.
To support this strategy, we announced an organizational review in October. This process is on track, including the planned 20% reduction in our annual operating costs. Regarding our current trading and outlook, holiday trading was consistent with revised expectations. To reiterate, this was helped by our back catalog, especially our CMS games. We have two PC games coming to console in the next few months, so they will be part of this financial year, together with the continuing nurturing of our back catalog. F1 Manager 2024 and our own IPs, IP CMS game are on schedule for release in FY 2025. And finally, our financial guidance for FY 2024 is reconfirmed. Alex, if you wanna move to the next slide, please. Yeah, just checking on that. Yeah, good.
So talking a little bit more about the back catalog, to give a little bit more detail into the good performance. Overall, those titles contributed GBP 34.4 million, which is about 72% of our total revenue. As mentioned, our CMS titles were particularly strong. They contributed to over half of our total H1 revenue, and that's equivalent to a sustain rate of 81%. Jurassic World Evolution 2 and Planet Zoo were our strongest performers. Again, put a bit more commentary on this. This is a testament to how we fundamentally understand the CMS market. We are proven genre leaders in that area, and it's pleasing to see the long tail of our player engagement. As you know, for people who have been following Frontier, this has been maintained by investing in our nurture approach.
So if I talk a little bit about PDLC, so far in this financial year, we've launched three packs for Planet Zoo and two packs for Jurassic World Evolution 2, and a little bit later on, I'll tell you that we do have some more planned. And PDLCs account for 29% of our total revenue. And then just a reminder, nurturing is not just about releasing PDLCs, it's about releasing downloadable content, games which have user-generated content, channel management, and subscription deals. Moving on to the new games. So as I said earlier, revenue contribution from our new games was lower than expected. Revenue from the Formula One Manager franchise reduced by 34% from H1 FY 2023 to H1 FY 2024.
Again, to give a little bit more insight into that, unit sales were actually even lower. However, we managed to secure a major Game Pass deal, which contributed nicely to revenue and also brought more players to the franchise. Talking about Realms of Ruin, now, the game, you know, it was disappointing. The game failed to gain the traction with the audience we anticipated. I'd like to take a little opportunity just to acknowledge the huge amount of passion and effort that our team put into that game. But all that being said, while the performance of our new games were disappointing, but looking at the proven success of our CMS back catalog, I think this really reinforces our decision to pivot to the CMS strategy. Again, hopefully, I'll be able to take some questions on that a little bit later on. Alex, back to you, please.
Thanks, Jonny. Okay, so Jonny's talked through revenue. I'm gonna talk through the income statement. We'll go through the adjusted income statement first, and then we'll chat through the IFRS one, and then we'll talk about cash. So on the adjusted income statement, this is using the adjusted EBITDA measure that we talk about, which is like a cash profitability measure. So in the first half, Jonny's talked about revenue already. You know, overall, we're pretty pleased with that outcome, given the challenges we have with the new launches. Gross profit margin percentage increased substantially up to 69%. Now, we benefit there from the subscription deals that we had. So we had F1 Manager 2023 going into Microsoft's Game Pass, and we also had a renewal on Jurassic World Evolution 2.
So they're very helpful 'cause there's a strong profitability from the accounting for those. We also had a stronger mix to own IP games because of the challenges we had with those two new launches. So don't expect a similar level of gross margin percentage in the second half. I think it will normalize back in the second half towards the sort of mid- to low-60%, maybe 63, something like that. Then going through the cost base, again, this is the sort of cash cost base. On a cash basis, R&D was pretty similar overall. So we had an increase in people-related costs. If we compare half one to half one, we had more people in our development organization, plus some pay rises.
Now, countering that, we had a much lower level of spend for Foundry investment, given the closure there, and we had a reduction in outsource. So we did see a little bit of the impact from the cost reductions from the organizational review in the first half, but most of those will be coming through in the second half and be ready for the financial year 2025. Sales and marketing, quite an increase over the comparative period. We launched two games, of course. We had Realms of Ruin, which was, you know, a major investment for us in terms of development and also marketing, and we had the F1 game. In comparison to the half one of the preceding financial year, where we just had the F1 game.
So that's the reason for sales and marketing being so high in the first half. So expect that to be lower in the second half through a, you know, a lower number of new content releases and obviously the cost reductions. G&A, very similar, actually, to the comparative period. So on a cash basis, total OpEx was, as you see, about GBP 38 million. So on an annual basis, we're talking sort of 76. And through the org review, you know, the target there is to get that cash OpEx now down to sort of GBP 60 million, maybe a little bit lower than GBP 60 million. And we'll see the benefit of that starting to come through in the second half of this financial year. Moving then on to the income statement, on an IFRS basis.
So this takes into account the capitalization of development costs as we create game assets and the amortization of those, and in the, in the case of the first half of this year, the impairment. So capitalization there at 59%, that's unusually low for us. Normally, we're higher than that. We're expensing all of the dev costs that we have for F1, so that's F1 Manager 2023, as we develop that, and also F1 Manager 2024, which I think Jonny will touch on a bit later. So because we're expensing those costs, we have a lower level of capitalization in the first half. I think in the second half, we, we probably have a slightly higher rate, but I don't think it will change substantially into, into half two. Then on amortization as an impairment, there's a couple of factors there.
The first one is the change in amortization profile that we talked about, the full year financial results, as we set out in the annual report. So when we launch a game, we now have a bigger charge in the launch month for the amortization, and over the first sort of twelve months, there's a steeper charge, and then it declines. So because we launched two games, first of all, we have a bigger amortization charge for F1 and for Realms of Ruin going into the first half than the comparative period. And then on top of that, we have the impairment charge for Realms of Ruin, which after that amortization, was still GBP 17 million. So, you know, a very substantial charge for Realms of Ruin.
So into half two, I'm expecting the amortization charge will be probably GBP 10 million to 11 million for half two. Now, that's obviously a significant change from the first half there. So sales and marketing, unaffected by sort of any non-cash measures or non-cash items. G&A, we've got the share charges within there as well, and some Forex. So overall, when you take into account the impairments and the high level of amortization, it does result in a you know, very substantial accounting loss in that first half of just over GBP 30 million. Moving on to cash flow now, this is usual, cash bridge. So we started the half year at the end of May there with GBP 28 million. We finished with just over GBP 17 million.
As Jonny mentioned, at the end of December, we'd actually increased that back up to GBP 20 from the Game Pass money being received. In that first half period, you can see there the GBP 4.9 of Adjusted EBITDA loss, that's effectively a sort of cash loss. A couple of items to highlight there. The first is the working capital movement, so it's a pretty substantial one. Receivables accounts for about GBP 6 of that, and payables is kind of around GBP 3 or 4, so the remainder of that. Receivables is mainly related to the subscription deals that I mentioned earlier, Microsoft Game Pass deals for both F1 and Jurassic. On payables, we've seen a reduction in the payables balance, partly relating to the cost reductions, but also the elimination of Foundry costs as well.
So that's the reason we've seen that working capital change. And then the tax money coming in. So that's the GBP 3.9 million of VGTR claims that we made for financial year 2022. We're just in the process now of filing claims for financial year 2023, which will mean that we are expecting to receive VGTR money for that year before the end of this accounting year, before the end of this financial year. That's the target. So talking a bit more about the organizational review, we announced this in October. So this was in response to our update on strategy, our CMS-focused strategy. We'd obviously seen challenges with the foundry strategy to go into self-publishing, into third-party publishing, and some of the other projects that we've seen outside of CMS.
So we felt we needed to do this organizational review, which would be cost reductions, but also a number of elements outside of cost reductions. And this would mean that we could more efficiently deliver on our plan, get the company back into profit, and create that sustainable foundation for the future. So with cost reductions being a major element of the review, and people cost being such a big proportion of our total costs, unfortunately, of course, redundancies are featured here, and the restructuring of roles there has been undertaken in two phases. Phase one is now complete, and that was largely roles outside of the development organization. So, you know, publishing and many other teams across operations and within admin.
Then phase two, which we're in the midst of at the moment, which we'll complete during February, is predominantly focused on the development organization. So, you know, that's been very challenging for the organization to go through that and, you know, not something we wanted to do. But that combined with the hiring freeze that we've had since the end of October, means that we will be reducing our overall people costs pretty substantially as part of those cost reductions. But as I mentioned, it's not just about cost reductions. We are updating our processes, our structure. We have got some leadership programs as well, which will all designed to support the change in strategy and getting us better back on a good footing for the future. Jonny, I'll pass back to you.
Yeah. Thank you. So on this slide, I've run through our upcoming releases in two sections. So the first is, like, remaining content and platforms for financial year 2024. This is quite interesting because it just illustrates, you know, some of the revenue-generating releases that we have coming, which you may or may not know. So I'll talk about the first two ones together, which is Planet Zoo PDLC and Jurassic World Evolution 2 PDLC. So we have more planned for this financial year. I think it's just really encouraging to see that there is a continued strong player demand for these packs. Every release is met with just great community sentiments, and each one provides a good, predictable return on investment.
I'd also again just for this recurring theme say that it really does reinforce that we understand the CMS market. We know how to work in that genre. Very excited to see Gate coming to console. We announced this yesterday, and it's going to be launched on the twentieth of February. It's a proven PC game, with players really excited by it, and I think just bringing it to new platforms fits very well. You know, if you look through various other turn-based strategy games, they do translate to console and been very successful. And moving on to the next thing, the very cryptic PC game coming to console.
I think it's really important to always broaden our addressable audience, and I'd probably like to call out how successful Planet Coaster was when we brought that to console, so a traditional PC game coming to console. And when you look at the cumulative cash curves, you can see how financially successful it's been. And for this game, which again, I'm not going to announce, we are looking forward to see players' reactions. I think they're going to really, really appreciate that we've managed to bring this game to console. Moving on to the new game releases, so we've got Formula One Manager 2024 coming out. This is the third installment of the franchise and is leveraging upon all the work that we've done in the previous games.
It's really quite nice for the development team to really add features on such a solid base. As part of this process and working with our publishing department, we're really embracing community feedback, and we look forward to the reactions to the new features that we're going to be putting in. Then I move on to the super cryptic, our own IP CMS game. So this game is progressing well. It's in full development, and it's on schedule for release in financial year 2025. At Frontier, we have really high hopes for this one, but I can't say too much yet. So again, in the coming months, we'll be talking about that a lot.
And I'm particularly excited because this is the first major installment of our CMS strategy pivot, so it's a very important game for Frontier. And I'm very pleased that when I look next door, the game is coming on very nicely indeed. Alex, I think that is your
Yeah.
You're the wrap-up.
Yeah. Thanks, Jonny. So current trading outlook. So one thing we haven't really talked about is holiday trading. Of course, by that, we mean Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Christmas. So, you know, there's a theme here. You know, the CMS portfolio did nicely over Christmas. You know, we're pleased with the performance there. Unfortunately, you know, we didn't really see a big pick-up with Realms of Ruin, and F1 was also a little bit weak. So, you know, we say lower sales from some other games, but predominantly it's the new games. So we y ou know, again, we're pleased with the CMS performance. That's done well over Christmas and into the first week of January. And hence, we're able to reconfirm that financial guidance.
We've got the revenue range of GBP 80-95 million, and if you look back at the commentary we provided in the business update in November, we still believe that we could get to that loss of sort of GBP 9 million, but it remains achievable towards the top end of that guidance. So we did think about narrowing that guidance. I think realistically, the top of that guidance is only likely to be achieved with everything sort of going in the right direction and maybe a subscription deal here and there.
But you know, we'll provide further updates as we go through. And as Jonny mentioned, you know, those two PC games coming to console, you know, we're excited about those, but we just need to be cautious about getting too excited and buffing up numbers on that basis. So, with that, I think we will pass over to questions, and looking forward to having a chat through in the next few minutes. So if you wanna put your hand up or do the thumbs-up thing, Patrick?
Sorry, yeah, thanks very much for the presentation. Just a couple of ones from me. So I want to focus first on the CMS category, and in terms of the releases that are to come in 2025, 2026, and 2027, the sort of similarity of the titles are not the potential for any cannibalization and kind of whether when you release 2026's version over 2025, could that have any impact of moving players across the new CMS title? And the second question was just a sort of a financials question on cash.
You know, assuming kind of you get towards the lower end of the range, Alex, on the revenue side, where do you see cash kind of coming in, and if you assume that you get that tax benefit that you've talked about applying for in terms of the VGTR? And just lastly, kind of looking at 2020, looking at the remainder of this year, you know, looking at kind of what's coming out in the market, how confident are you kind of on the sort of back catalog continuing to perform as expected? I mean, are you basically concerned around some of the bigger releases in the first half of the year in the market? That's it for me. Thanks.
Alex, can I take one and three, and if you don't mind, you can do tax?
Sure.
So it's a really good question, the first one about cannibalization, you know, three CMS games on the spin, what does that mean for our players? I think, Alex, it might be worth just bringing up slide 12, I think it is. Because, you know, to answer these questions, it's quite nice to look back about, you know, our releases of our CMS, CMS games. Sorry, Alex, I threw you under the bus there.
Sorry, is it that one? That one?
Yeah, that. Absolutely. So if I look, there are four CMS games there in five years, and you look at the revenue that we've generated, and obviously you're very familiar with accumulative cash. If there is cannibalization, which I believe there is, I also think there's cross-pollination and brand awareness. I really would settle for those numbers. So this is how I'm answering this challenge internally as well. I'd also point out sequels, so people have said if we were to do sequels. I'm not confirming anything, you know, does the second sequel ever do well? And, you know, what time do you need between them?
I would point out, using the data here, Jurassic World Evolution One and Jurassic World Evolution Two, three years apart, and the games have sold comparably, you know, very similar. Again, obviously it doesn't look like it here because only GBP 98 million for Jurassic World Evolution Two, but that's still selling now and selling very well. So I guess perhaps if you went onto the cumulative cash chart, Alex, it would just really show and illustrate with past data, yeah, those two purple lines, how a sequel can do well, if that sequel is engineered correctly.
You know, you really are listening to the players, you are putting in new features which they want. You are making sure it still has that sort of core resonance with the audience. I do think on CMS, we have that experience to do that. We've been managing the life cycle of CMS games for such a long time, and we have so much data that although that is a, you know it's the question we constantly ask ourselves, we are very confident that we have the answer.
Just one other one on that. Just, sorry, just, like, so, like, are the variety of the games expected to be? Like, is there expected to be a lot of variety, and can you get a lot of synergies from the, like, the development of the three, you know, or teams or multiple teams working on one or more of the titles?
Yeah.
Or is it sort of
Yeah.
Yeah.
Absolutely. So the second point, that's exactly what we're planning into this organizational review. This is why we can, you know, do those, you know, optimizations and reduce our capacity, because we are relying on the synergies between each one of these games. In terms of how, going back to the first part, how different they are, I really just the difference, I can't say anything more than that. Again, you know, the spread, I believe will be similar to the spread in terms of, you know, audience crossover than those previous titles that you've seen four out of five, five years. So, you know, suffice to say, we have a confidence that this cannibalized question is, although, you know, absolutely fundamental, we're very comfortable with it.
Jonny, do you wanna deal with the question about back catalog?
On fixing congestion? Yeah, so are we confident with back catalog? Yes, we are. Again, Christmas was really good. Christmas was very congested. Lots of, you know, sort of AAA titles in there, taking, you know, all the oxygen out the room. What we do find is with our back catalog, there is a sort of price sensitivity part of the market, and that's why we believe that that did very well. You know, if I was to take even a further step back, probably answering more, is that when I look at Realms of Ruin, and I look at the price that we charged for that, and I look at Baldur's Gate, and I look at, you know, Hogwarts, and I look at Starfield, I think that's a very difficult space to operate in.
I think what I like about our CMS games, or what I like about our back catalog, and what I like about Chaos Gate as well, is the pricing is the next tier below, and I think finding those niches is where Frontier traditionally has been very good at, and that's where we're moving to in the future. So I do think we need to be very cognizant of the macro, very cognizant of, you know, people haven't got that much money in their pocket, but also celebrate that the games, if we launch at the correct price, and our PDS, PDLC at the great price, is still great value for money. And we believe we still have that engaged audience because of our MAUs and DAUs and our, our success over Christmas in those areas.
Okay. I'll just pick up Patrick's other question was about cash. You know, clearly, there's been a bit of concern about our cash position at GBP 20 million at the end of December. You know, we're probably not as worried as most people. That's before we collect up the money for Christmas, so that comes in during January and February. I think if you do take the sort of bottom end of the scenario and think, well, the revenue's gonna be weak, and we struggle to achieve the cost reductions, and appreciate a lot of the analyst projections are towards the bottom, then, you know, cash does get a little bit squeaky towards the end of the summer, and people have sort of low numbers.
We're actually not as worried as most people out there, but clearly, you know, it makes sense to be doing some stuff in the background. So we are having some conversations, and we've got a couple of options that we're looking at, just to make sure that there aren't any concerns. And of course, with the audit coming up at the end of May, what we don't wanna do is have difficult conversations with the auditors about sign-off. So, that's the main reason to be talking to some of these potential partners.
Thanks.
Uh, Jasmine?
Hi, morning, guys. Hope you can hear me. I've got a couple of questions. You, you've kinda touched on the Christmas period already, you know, relatively pleased, but I was wondering if you could elaborate a little bit more on maybe some of the kind of consumer trends that you're seeing. I think this time last year, we were talking quite a lot around higher price sensitivity, and, we've seen quite a lot of discounting coming into Christmas. Just wondering how those trends have developed. I saw that some of your newer titles in the portfolio that have released and potentially not done quite as well as you expected, have been quite heavily discounted, you know, kind of through November to January. But any kind of, you know, more broader, overarching themes you were saying would be really helpful.
Sorry, that was quite a few parts to that one, but the second part, or second question I wanted to ask as well, is around the comments on outsourced development in your statement. So I think you talked about lower spend on outsourced development. Is that a function of maybe the titles that are in development? Is it a function of the cost reduction program, or is that a more broader strategy shift? That would be helpful as well. Thank you.
Okay. Well, maybe start with Christmas and, and, Jonny, feel free to jump in as well. But if we start with the existing portfolio, particularly the games where we have active PDLC, strategy really hasn't changed that much. You know, it's if you look at the timing of the PDLCs, often it's just for a price discount. If we can have our own price discount, that then leans into a Steam sale, for example, that works really well, and you've seen us do that with Planet Zoo and Jurassic over the last 12 months. So the strategy hasn't changed, and the kinda results aren't so different either. You know, you might remember that we had a really good Easter.
We had a great sort of Steam publisher sale back in Easter. We had another number of opportunities during the summer and then sort of Thanksgiving, Christmas period. Again, Jurassic and Zoo were the sort of star performers, and we talk about the CMS portfolio, but them in particular did very well. Worth noting there that the sustain rate on the CMS games are 81%. There's obviously some games that don't have PDLC, Planet Coaster, Jurassic World Evolution 1, and RollerCoaster Tycoon 3. So actually, the sustain rates for Jurassic World Evolution 2 and Planet Zoo are doing very well. So not much change in strategy. We're not really seeing a big change in any in the type of engagement with with players. Over time, the PDLC percentage does increase.
You know, we're still attracting lots of new players, but at Christmas, I think Planet Zoo was something like 35% base game, 65% PDLC. So it's just shows the strength of that model. Jurassic World Evolution 2 is obviously not been out quite as long, and that's more in the sort of 50/50 bracket between base game and PDLC. So that's the sort of first theme, I suppose, is existing portfolio, particularly on those CMSes where we've got PDLC. Strategy is very similar and the outcomes very similar. You then asked about some of the new games, and I think that's where we struggled, and probably we struggled, you know, for a variety of reasons, but certainly competition during the year was difficult.
For a full-priced, premium-priced video game, even with some pretty big discounts, it's quite hard to get your game noticed. It's pretty noisy at Christmas, so we did go big with some of those discounts, and it didn't really yield, you know, a particularly big results for us. That's definitely been a challenge. When we look ahead to the CMS-focused strategy that we have, of course, we know those audiences, we know how to reach those audiences, so we feel very good about that. I think always with the new genres that we've sought to enter, you've got the development challenge, but you've also got the publishing challenge. You know, you're trying to reach a different audience that you don't really normally engage with. So, Jonny, do you wanna chip in with anything else on that one?
Yeah, just some method things. So I do think the games industry is definitely reeling from the macro, and people haven't got that spend. I do think from Frontier's strategic point of view, we shouldn't be competing with Triple-A. We can't compete with those budgets. Even when you look at Triple-A, it's very hard for some of these, you know, really large publishers to launch a new brand, so they're going back and looking at their previous, you know, previous brands. And you I'm sure you're gonna see more sort of sequels, remakes, or something like that, so that brand awareness is there.
I do think that we need to pitch our games the next tier down, and I also think we need to really rely on where we are market leaders, where we really understand the players, where we have a reputation for producing those games. And all those things are going to mean that out of those 12 or 13, 14,000 games launched on Steam, we're going to be above the parapet because we have actually played, we are really maximizing the niches that we've exploited. I've gone too biological there, sorry.
We're really maximizing those areas which we have done in the past. So it's, you know, it's a tough time for the industry, but because Christmas was good, I think it's gonna be on the up. I just think the people who are gonna be successful are the ones that are really gonna stick to what they know best, and I don't think there's gonna be as much diversification within companies. They're going to sort of stick to their knitting, and they're gonna do what they do well, and I think the players are gonna respond to that. And thanks, Jonny. The second question there was about outsourced development. Now, you know, you're right there, we have got a couple of themes there.
Some of it is cost reduction, but also it's the nature of the game. So F1 and also Realms of Ruin tend to have a bigger proportion for outsource, and with a focus now on the CMS games, then that's a substantial reduction. Outsource is still gonna be important for us, so you know, it's particularly good for being able to flex and having short-term demand. It's particularly good for where we have developed a certain sort of pathway. You know, we often give the example of on Jurassic and Planet Zoo, if we've done a certain number of sort of mammal types or dino types, then we can start to use outsource to be able to flex up and get output out more quickly. So that's the reason that's reducing that.
Great. Thank you very much.
Uh, James?
Yes, good morning, thank you. Good to see you. Couple of questions from me. For the CMS focus, obviously, you know, you've touched on why from a revenue and cash perspective and a sort of knowledge base is why you're focusing on those ones. But I guess given each of the games have a similar mechanic underlying that, is it fair to assume that the development of the next game, the incremental next game, is incrementally less expensive than, say, you know, obviously going down a different genre where we've seen the cash curves be substantially deeper? So going that way, as well as having better curves, you know, could your capital intensity reduce over the medium term, hence maybe the scope for doing more games?
It could increase as time goes on, given that, you know, the incremental cost is possibly a bit less as time goes on. Second question, just around the marketing strategy of the CMS game that's coming. When you launched Planet Zoo, were you able to leverage the Planet brand, the other sort of Coaster players at that time, or was it a completely separate sort of Planet Zoo sort of marketing strategy? And then hence, when we think about the next title, obviously if it's a sequel, it's easier to understand how that might work, but if it's not one, is there something in the existing Planet brand that you might be able to leverage? Just in terms of how that strategy might go would be interesting. Thanks.
Okay, why don't I ask the first one? I'll do the first one, Jonny, and you can do the second one if you like.
On the first one, you're gonna say that we can do things cheaper, and I'm gonna say that we're gonna do things better. So just be wary of the jump in, but go on.
Well, better, better and cheaper maybe.
Yeah.
So worth rewinding to just a few years ago, maybe 2 or 3 years ago, we were talking about getting to 3 games a year. You know, probably a CMS game, an F1 game, and maybe another game. You know, it could be an RTS game. And, you know, your question is quite right, James. To support 3 very different games per year, you know, does take more capital. You know, you don't get efficiencies between those projects necessarily, and some of those genres are quite expensive to maintain and enter in the first place. You know, we saw that with RTS, and we saw that with F1 as well. So there's a sort of an entry tax just to get the first game out, and then you can get some efficiencies after that.
So certainly when we look back and think, well, we were trying to get to three games a year, and now what we're talking about is having an F1 game a year and then, you know, going for the CMS games as the focus for the company. It does mean fewer people overall, but it does also mean pretty significant efficiency, and, you know, I'll just flash up the cash chart here. You know, just as a reminder, I know we referred to that just now. If you look at the CMS portfolio, the kind of, you know.
To get to launch, we're talking, I think Planet Coaster was maybe sort of 6 or 7, and maybe Jurassic World Evolution 2, including marketing, was maybe 12 or something like that to get to launch. You know, that's the size of the investment for those games, and of course, it's been very expensive to get into F1 and into Realms of Ruin. So we are gonna see some pretty significant efficiency, I think, in terms of what we do in the future. But as Jonny says, you know, it's also about doing things better as well as doing things cheaper. Jonny, do you wanna talk about the CMS publishing strategy?
Yeah, yeah, it's, it's quite interesting to do. Maybe a little bit of a history lesson. I remember when we were ideating on Planet Zoo or an animal about a game about zoos, and we were working out, should we call it a Planet game, or should we call it something else? You know, we were a little bit worried at the time that maybe people were expecting it to be an expansion to Planet Coaster. And we took this real step back by thinking that previously there used to be something called tycoon games, and tycoon games, especially when you're looking in the early days, we had Transport Tycoon, RollerCoaster Tycoon, which we made, and Zoo Tycoon. It was such a really recognized brand, even though it was done by different companies. People knew exactly what was up.
You know, it said what it was on the tin. And then we thought that as we move forward, and because we believe so much in Planet Coaster, we thought that this brand awareness would be a real leg up in marketing, and it proved. So obviously, marketing, there is a bit of a divergence. You have a core where you're talking about, you know, this is a Planet game, but then also you are focusing on people who like zoo animals, people who like you know, sort of Coasters and whatever our next games are going to be. So I think it's really important, this Planet brand. I think it's synonymous with quality, the best CMS games around. It's synonymous with Frontier. So I just think it's a very well-established brand, and I think it's high value, and our publishing department really, you know, leverages that.
Sorry, just I did have one final question, actually, just on the Chaos Gate, look there. So you referenced how onto console.
Yeah.
Obviously, we've got that line chart, but when you first launched, well, when Chaos Gate was first launched, it was obviously a smaller one. It was within the publishing side, if I remember correctly, within that part. Now that you've sort of got more control over it, is there scope for it being a better rep- you know, when it comes, it's actually a sort of a better bump from than what Coaster might have seen, relatively?
I'd say what the, you know, the moving it onto console is that you're leveraging all the work that's been done. You know, the game was, it was- you know, yes, you need to I thought there were some tweaks to the various control mechanisms, but the game fundamentally, because it is a, a turn-based strategy game, will work on console. So, you know, the calculation is there, is the amount we've invested to move it to console, the quality of the actual game as well, because, you know, players really, really, really did engage with it, and then what it's gonna sell. So we are expecting a bump on it, because in terms of our return on investment, because that investment to move it there is quite, it is quite reasonable.
Okay, cool. Thank you.
Okay, William?
Business. Good morning, guys. Thanks for the presentation. Just a couple from me. Can you sort of provide a little bit more detail on sort of how F1 Manager 2023 has been received on Game Pass? And then secondly, following up from that, what are you seeing in terms of subscription deals? Obviously, you managed to secure a couple, but in terms of those values that we're expecting, are they in line with your expectations, is it a bit more challenging? That'd be great.
Okay, maybe start with the second question on the subscription deals. So, key point there is we shouldn't ever rely on these deals. You know, they should be icing on the top and additional bonuses and, you know, we're very pleased with the deals that we got for F1 and Jurassic, particularly F1. The value for that deal versus the underlying performance of the game, it was strong. You know, we're pleased with the outcome there. People have been engaging with it on Game Pass, but if you compare the active sort of player base through Game Pass on that game versus a Jurassic, for example, it is lower.
And then we call out in the statement there that broadly, F1 Manager 2023, in the first half, the performance is about a third down from the previous year, but of course, that includes Game Pass. So the underlying sales performance is quite a bit lower than that. So there are deals around, as we talked about in the past, I think both Microsoft and PlayStation and Epic and others, they wanna plan more, you know, further ahead. So they're looking to make sure that they talk to us regularly and see the portfolio and have opportunities to engage and look what we're up to. There's less opportunity for sort of short-term deals. Having said that, I think the F1 deal came about fairly quickly, because I think someone else probably had a game that was penciled in for Game Pass that pushed out.
And so we sort of jumped in there and were able to achieve that deal. So there will always be an opportunity for some short-term benefit here and there, but generally, it's looking longer term and planning these things out. And as ever, it's you know, doing some tricky calculations on our part to see whether these deals make sense, and clearly with F1, it made a lot of sense to go for a Game Pass deal. So I don't know whether that quite answered your question, William, but I think overall, there is still money about for deals. It's maybe not harder to get, but you just gotta be more organized, I think, and engage earlier.
And of course, given Jonny and David's relationships in the industry, you know, we think we're well placed there. Yeah, maybe I can just add a little bit more to the Game Pass metrics. I don't want to give too many details. I think Alex was pretty correct. You know, again, we did see a big uptick, but proportionally, compared to like sort of Jurassic, it wasn't as much. But it was nice to see that it wasn't just a you know.
The MAU increased as well, and you know, the way I look at it is that more players now who are familiar with the brand, so when we bring out F1 Manager 2024, there's now another group that we can sort of go at. So I would say it was a success. Obviously, the revenue event was pretty good as well. But yeah, it was okay. It was okay. I just don't want to give too many secrets away from Microsoft. I'll just try and quantify that it was you know, we were happy, but it wasn't as big as a Jurassic World Evolution, one or two.
Yeah, yeah. Thanks. And maybe if I could just squeeze in another one that's sort of related to James' question, but maybe. I think you've talked about Planet Coaster when it was ported to console, delivering GBP 15 million of incremental revenue to the top line. So what, in terms of profitability, is that - has there been a change in sort of your ability to support things easier? And for lower costs essentially. So that, so the impact on the bottom line could be greater.
I think it's always desirable to try and do the console work while you're doing the PC work, and, you know, that's why doing a simultaneous launch for Jurassic has made so much sense. So it's always extra work to go back and do it later. I think that the challenge is sometimes the, you know, the strengths of the platform you're porting to in terms of, you know, which consoles. I think when we look at Chaos Gate, porting that to the older generation consoles has been a bit of a challenge, but, you know, the team have done a super job there.
So, it is helpful having a proper established base of Gen Nine consoles now, PlayStation 5 and Xbox, the latest Xbox generation, and I think that will help us in the future. Jonny, I don't know whether you wanna chip in there with anything?
I think just to raise the It's a subsequent point to what William raised, but I think it's very, very important, you know, as we move forward and the player base for Gen Nine really increases and there are a few people buying Gen Eight, I mean, that really allows us with some of our games, which are, you know, very, very sophisticated, both from a graphical point of view, but also underlying sort of technology behind the scenes, the simulation aspects of it, is really allowing us to bring some of these games to console that we wouldn't have been able to do in the past.
I won't say any more because people will be triangulating as to what it may or may not be, but I think that's a really, really interesting point, because PC games are normally quite resource hungry, and I do think the Gen Nine consoles are a beast. But Gen Eight weren't quite there. So yeah, as we move forward, I think it's more an even playing field for developing for next gen Gen Nine consoles and PC.
Okay, let's go to Caspar.
Hi, guys. Thanks. There's 2 quick questions for me. Most of mine have been answered already. Just on, sort of understanding your audience. I mean, clearly, the group understands CMS audience very well, but, you know, are there any areas for improvement in terms of maybe additional data capture, just to really optimize monetization of that group? Or do you think current processes are pretty robust already? And then number 2 is just on pricing dynamics for the wider market. I mean, obviously, there's a lot of, news flow about depressed returns environment, need for higher pricing. What's capping that at the moment, in your view? Is it, sort of continued pressure on consumer wallets, and pricing sensitivity, or do you think there's something else that's going on?
If I do the first one, Alex, if you do the second, second one?
Sure.
So the first one, I think it's an absolutely, it's a really, really important point. The reason why we're doing this pivot to CMS is not just because we know how to make them, we know how to sell them, we know our audience. And those three games that we're doing, for me, is giving us breathing time, probably the correct. But a time to get ourselves back into profit while we really understand how we understand the audience as we move forward. This organizational review is not just about cost cutting, as Alex said, it's fundamentally looking at functions with the business and how can we improve development? So all the things that James was referring to about how can we get more synergy in there.
But it's also, it's no coincidence that phase one was publishing. It's really looking at publishing and saying, you know, "How can we not make the same mistakes as F1 and Realms of Ruin?" In terms of just not fully understanding that audience, not getting that market size right, not mapping the features that players expect into the game. Although the implementation was good, the execution was good, was it exactly the right game for the market?
Did we understand it like we do at CMS's? So on this organizational review, the first part of it is, I think the team we have now is. It's not a vacuum there. I think they're really stepping up to the plate. The right people are in place. They're really understanding. They're gonna be using external market research as well to justify, you know, what we think this audience size is and what the audience preference is. And then as we move forward, we are then looking at augmenting that team with more expertise and strategic expertise in that area.
You know, as I said, it was disappointing, Realms of Ruin, especially because the amount of passion went into it, but it really drove home that we didn't understand the audiences as much as we believed we did. And so what you do as a business, you know, the best thing to do is you take it on the chin, and you put that function back into the company. So I think it's a really point. I think it was our Achilles heel when I look at it, and as I say, people are stepping up to the plate now, and this organizational review is determined to get us in a better place in that area.
Thanks, Jonny. So maybe move to the pricing question. I think in some ways, the pricing is similar, right? 'Cause we understand the pricing for CMS games. You know, we've got that strong history with the Planet Games and with the Jurassic Games. We know how to price them and, you know, we talked about it before, you sort of almost go as high as you dare, make sure you've got a deluxe product, support it with PDLC and get ready to be ticking down in the discounts over time. And it works really, really well, and, you know, we'll continue to do that.
There's always a bit of challenge in selling that first price and working out what the SKUs look like and, you know, do you have an ultimate or a deluxe edition or a classic edition or whatever, and what's in there. And so looking at some of the other new games that we've launched, F1 and Realms of Ruin, that's where we, yeah, we probably didn't understand the price point as well. We did plenty of research to see what other games had done. With Realms in particular, you know, we feel that is a very big, interesting, involved game, lots of game modes, and the creative elements are very, very strong.
But we didn't do a good enough job selling those things, so when we have a premium price, as we did for that game, you know, we saw quite a lot of comments, as I, I think some of you would have seen by, by reviewing Steam reviews and things, that people weren't happy with the price. And some of that is us just not doing a good enough job in, in selling the size and the, and the scope of that game. And clearly, we need to learn from that. With F1, I think pricing was probably a bit less of an issue. You know, we saw good engagement with the first game. But clearly we need to keep a, keep an eye on that and make sure that we are, are getting it right.
I think, as ever, there are games that can go for a premium price, the big IPs, as we've seen with Baldur's Gate and Hogwarts and others, that can manage to achieve that. Then outside of that, people are very price-conscious and will be looking for deals, and that's where sometimes I think we get almost caught in the middle. You know, we're not quite at the high level, and we're not quite at the sort of discount level, so it's something we need to keep an eye on. But again, you know, I know we're bleating on about CMS quite a lot, but we know CMSs. We know how to launch those games, we know how to price those, and the team knows how to deliver on those, so we're feeling good about that.
Great. Thanks a lot, guys. Those are very t hat's very clear.
Um, Ollie?
Hey, guys. Just a quick one from me, sort of building on an earlier question. It's just, given the lead times on the subscription deals, and sort of the disappointing independent F1 23 sales, would you consider, are you looking to get F1 24 on a subscription deal, say, pre-launch? And that way you kind of know the end return from the entire budget, and you can sort of plan the development of the game based on that end return, and it kind of de-risks the whole thing. Is that something you're considering, potentially for that stream or other games?
Yeah, there's sometimes those kind of opportunities. If we look back at Planet Coaster coming to console, we did a launch Game Pass deal there. We've talked with other players, particularly, you know, Epic, for example, about they want sort of launch exclusives and things like that. Actually, for Elite Dangerous, we had console come to, you know, we had a sort of Xbox exclusive, and then it came to PlayStation later. So there are those opportunities. I think realistically for F1 Manager, given its challenging performance in terms of the daily active users and the monthly active users, I think that's gonna be a bit of an uphill discussion with Microsoft or others.
But yes, of course, we're always interested in those things and, you know, frankly, we've turned down some pretty big money over the last 5 years for some of those launch titles. You know, we had some good chats about Jurassic World Evolution 2, for instance. But there are deals to be done. I think generally we'd probably prefer, unless the money was really substantial, we'd probably prefer to launch and then come out later on those deals. But let's see, you know, there might be opportunities in the future.
Cool. Thank you.
Uh, Katie?
Thank you. Just thinking about some of the CMS launches and the profile, is it right to assume that these will take the place of just kind of a single console or PC launch? Or could it be multi-platform?
Could be multi-platform. Yeah, we've not said. Clearly, if you look back, Planet Coaster, Planet Zoo were PC only, then Planet Coaster ended up coming to console. Both the Jurassic games were multi-platform, and actually Jurassic then Jurassic, the first Jurassic game came to Switch. So yeah, we don't really want to say anything about the own IP CMS game. All we're saying is, it's an own IP CMS game, and it's coming in FY 20 25.
Okay, just a couple more, if that's okay.
Sure.
Have you got any stats on crossover of players on the CMS Planet games? So, in terms of Planet Coaster and Planet Zoo, do you, do you know how many players play both?
I think we've got a decent amount of data. Sometimes it's quite hard to get because of GDPR and being able to capture individual users' data, but anecdotally, you know I'll answer it, then Jonny can answer properly. You see a number of the key creators in both those games who have learned the skills in Planet Coaster, the piece-by-piece building, and they go on to make pretty amazing stuff, stuff in Zoo. I think generally, the kind of underlying player base has not necessarily got so much of a crossover between the two. I think, you know, they are quite distinct audiences. But I'm gonna shut up because Jonny knows an awful lot more than I do about zoo games and tycoon games.
Well, well, well, I did, but you've been listening, so I think that's exactly right. The crossover isn't as much as you would think, but it is disproportionately skewed by the evangelizers, these master creators, the people you see on YouTube who are amazing. They like both games, and so it is quite interesting that I don't want to really release any data, but it's not as much as one would think. Again, that's when, you know, I really, really was pleased that Patrick raised that question about cannibalization, because I wanted to sort of show that, you know, the sales are still good when you have those games in that very, you know, sort of relatively small window. But also, it goes to the other point about brand awareness.
I think there's good brand awareness, even though people might not necessarily buy the game. So, you know, again, I just think it's a really, it's a really good thing, and we don't feel threatened by any of this, you know, sort of the cross-play. I think it's to be encouraged, but yeah, not as big as one would think.
Got it. Finally, the Switch platform has been a console that user typically found it more difficult to transport your games onto, 'cause of the complexity. Do you think, or have you heard rumors, or have you got any information on the specs of perhaps the new iteration of Switch that could open that as more of a plausible platform for your future games?
So the only information I have is being a bit of a fanboy of Nintendo, is reading what's on the same sort of publications that you're reading. You know, the issue we've had with, you're absolutely right, with Switch, is that the power band is not there, and our games are different. Although we did manage to do a very good job, I thought, of bringing Jurassic World Evolution, sort of complete to it. So I'm looking forward to the future. I'm also looking forward to
Although everybody will be concentrating on its CPU and its GPU, it's gonna be what peripheral they put with it, if they're gonna put one in. You know, they're really forward-thinking. Every single time, they really do sort of do the unexpected. So, you know, on a personal note, I hope that we can do some more work with Nintendo. But speculation normally gets it wrong, so until they actually come and speak to us, which they haven't yet, or we get some concrete announcements, just looking forward to it.
Thank you.
Yeah, I'm just looking down the list to see if there's any more questions. I can't see any hands up anymore. Well, I think we're pretty much at time anyway. So thanks very much for joining the call. Thanks for your engagement with the Q&A. If anyone wants to engage and have some chats outside and follow up with questions, then just drop me a note. I'm happy to do that. We're moving on to the investor roadshow, which is next few days, which is gonna be virtual, but we'll have time to engage. So do just let us know, and thank you for your time.
Yeah, absolutely. Take care, everyone.