Let's get started then. So, I'm Alex Bevis, I'm the CFO. Welcome to our Financial 2024 Results presentation. If you could keep your cameras off and stay muted, please, and then, we'll have a Q&A session at the end. We'll probably go through the presentation in maybe 20, 25 minutes, and there'll be plenty of time for questions. So, with that, I will pass over to Jonny.
Yeah. Hi, hi there. Thank you all for making the time this morning, much appreciated. So I'm gonna run through the summary, and obviously we'll be talking about more detail as we go through the presentation, and obviously we'd love to take your questions at the end. So if I was to categorize Financial Year 2024, I'd say it was certainly a year of two halves. The H1 was challenging, we had to take decisive action to turn around the second half, and also to bring success to the future. In H1, we did a strategic reset to focus on our proven core strength, that's creative management simulation games, CMSs from now on, so I don't have to go through that tongue twister. This was supported by an organizational review.
We have to acknowledge this was very tough for our people, but it was absolutely necessary, and we were razor focused on delivering it. I mean, the two parts of that was, the first one we had to reshape our teams. We had to encourage them to drive efficiency and to do more with less, and that's exactly what they did. We also reduced the annual costs by around about 20%. Then we move on to the second half, and it was pleasing to see the strong H2 performance for our CMS back catalog, which delivered revenue ahead of expectations at GBP 89.3 million . These factors delivered a return to profitability in H2 on an Adjusted EBITDA basis, and this was before the sale of the RCT3 publishing rights, which was around about the GBP 4.9 million mark.
If you include those rights, we made an Adjusted EBITDA profit of GBP 0.9 million for the year. And then finally, again, if we go back to our trading update in January, everybody was worried about our cash position. We've increased our cash now to 29.5% during the financial year. So again, it was nice to see this turnaround and, as I say, this foundation for the future. Alex, do you want to do the next slide, please? So if I talk about the key releases and key events, again, I think this really does illustrate that it was a year of two halves. So I'm going to work through sort of from top to bottom through this slide.
So in H1, we launched two major games, the F1 Manager 2023 and Realms of Ruin, and we were very disappointed that they just did not deliver commercial success. Again, we talked about a lot about that at the start of the year. This obviously contributed to that strategic CMS pivot, which I've talked about, and we will talk about more during the presentation. But then we move into H2, and it was really encouraging to see the launch of Planet Zoo: Console Edition. This was a critical and commercial success. I mean, this is actually quite an important sort of landmark, because it brought us back to releasing games which actually make money, and also I think it validated the CMS market, especially on console.
If you can recall, we actually said that we actually sold a premium SKU for GBP 99, which, you know, with the economic crisis and the cost of living, I think that just shows how passionate people are about our planet and our CMS games. Moving on, as part of our CMS pivot, we developed more PDLC for Jurassic World Evolution 2 to Planet Zoo. Just to drill into that a little bit more, Planet Zoo, we did 18 PDLCs during this lifetime, and this is something that we decided to action. This is...
You know, what's good about it is that we can forecast what it's gonna make, and it delivers a really strong, predictable return on investment, so we've been doing more of that, and as I say, that really contributed to the revenue. I think Alex might go into this in a bit more detail, but we sold the option rights to RollerCoaster Tycoon 3. This is good for both parties. I think it was nice to accelerate some income coming into our business, and for Atari, it brought the whole franchise back together again. And then the final thing I'll talk about is the sales events in H2. As we know, the market is really congested, and it's all about visibility, so having these feature sales is really important.
These relationships that we have with the platform holders is paramount to our success. Picking out a few of the Steam sales, we did the April Steam Frontier Publisher Sale, which was our second-most second-biggest sale ever. This is bigger than all our Christmas sales that we've done before, and there was only one sale previous, which was better than that, and that followed a launch of a major title. And then the final one, which again, was very pleasing, was we actually call it the Planet Coaster Steam Mega Sale. This was where we did a 95% discount on Planet Coaster, and within nine days, it brought one million new players to the franchise.
Half of those were from China, so again, this is all sort of reaffirming that this CMS strategy that we have, the players are there, ready, they want to consume the games that we make. So as I say, a year of two halves. It's pleasing to see, you know, how the business has turned around, and it is all about setting ourselves up for the future. Alex, do you want to move on to your slides?
Sure. Thanks, Jonny. So we'll move on to the cumulative revenue slide. So this is a firm favorite with investors. It's a great visual way of looking at our business. So this is cumulative revenue over the life of various games here. The vertical lines are months. If you look at the furthest out line there, Elite Dangerous, that's gonna be coming up for its ten-year anniversary this December. So, you know, it's a pretty long period of time that we're able to sustain these revenues. I'm gonna focus on the CMS games on the chart. So starting with Planet Coaster, Jonny already mentioned the mega sale there, you can see that blip towards the end of the blue line. So great performance from Planet Coaster.
In terms of its revenue contribution versus the preceding year, it's very, very similar, so it's around about GBP 8 million for each year. I think we quote in the RNS, there's a 96% sustain, so in other words, it only reduced by 4%, in 2024 versus FY 2023, which is obviously a great result. Then looking towards the Jurassic games, the purple line at the top there is Jurassic World Evolution One. So as you can see, that's the biggest revenue generator, in terms of cumulative lifetime sales. That's still generating revenue, you know, meaningful revenues. Of course, it was largely superseded by Jurassic World Evolution Two when that came out, but it's still generating revenue for us on a bunch of platforms, including Switch. So, you know, we're very happy with the performance there.
Then Jurassic World Evolution 2 is pretty close to the level of performance of the first game. I'm very pleased with the revenue contribution in the year. It's actually our biggest revenue contribution, slightly ahead of Planet Zoo, at just under GBP 23 million of revenue from Jurassic World Evolution 2. So another great performance, and as Jonny already articulated on the previous slide, PDLC is a really important element of that. As ever, what we wanna do with these lines is keep them as steep and as straight for as long as possible. So great to see that performance from Jurassic World Evolution 2. And then I guess the kinda standout performance is Planet Zoo, as Jonny already talked about.
Ignoring for a second the console edition launch, on PC, we achieved a sustain rate of just about 90%, so a great performance from Planet Zoo on PC, helped by those PDLC packs. So, you know, we're still bringing a lot of people into Planet Zoo, and then, of course, on top of that, you see that bump up from the console edition launch. So what we wanna do now with that green line is keep that as steep and as straight as possible. So great performance across the CMS games on a revenue basis, and I think turning to the next slide now, so moving away from gross revenue, this is cumulative cash flow, and what we've done here, again, similar to the first slide, is aligned on a time basis.
The launches, you can see, the launches coming in, all at the same time. So the period before that, we are spending money because this is cumulative cash flow, so it's revenue, less all distribution costs, all royalties, development costs, and marketing costs. So what we're looking for is a strong launch, to try and get back into profit very, very quickly, and typically, the CMS games have all done that within a month, and then deliver substantial return on investments over time. So, just going through the CMS games again, you can see the strength of Planet Coaster there. You know, very good revenue generation turning into cash flow.
Because of the lower cost to produce that game back when it came out in 2016, it's actually our strongest cumulative return on investment, something like 350% as a stat, so you know, that's a great performance from Planet Coaster. Planet Zoo then is ticking up and has become our financially biggest generating game in terms of cash profit. So, great performance from the console launch, overtaking Jurassic World Evolution One, and then both the Jurassic games still obviously delivering very substantial cash contributions. So again, this is a firm favorite with investors. It's a great visual representation of the strength of our model of achieving those big launches, followed by a long period of nurture. So, oops, sorry.
Moving on to the income statement, then we've talked quite a lot about the revenue already, and obviously, the CMS games being a good contributor. You'll see in the RNS, we quote a total proportion of revenue from CMS games at 62%, so great performance across those four titles. PDLC is an important element there, and broadly, it was about 50% across the whole of the CMS portfolio. So you know, Planet Zoo and Jurassic World Evolution 2, PDLC is still really delivering very well for us. Across the whole portfolio, with all the other games, PDLC was, I think about 65%, of reve...
Sorry, base game sales were 65%, and PDLC was 35%, but then we put within the base game the subscription deals, so excluding those, it was about 60/40. So PDLC is really critical for us, and, you know, we continue to invest on a case-by-case basis, depending on the nature of the project. Moving on to gross profit margin, you can see the substantial tick up there to 69%. So two main factors there. One is a bigger proportion from own IP games, rather than royalty-based games in the revenue number, and the other one is subscription deals. So subscription deals, like Game Pass, tend to come through with a 100% margin, unless there's any royalties to pay to the IP holder, hence the bump up in gross margin.
So this year, FY2025 , that we've just started, I think will be similar to that level, probably not quite as high as that level, depending on what deals come through, but certainly 67%, maybe 68% gross margin is achievable for this year because of the substantial contribution we're expecting from Planet Coaster 2. Moving through the rest of the income statement, then on an OpEx basis, you can see that over the whole year as a whole, we've reduced our cash OpEx by about 9% to GBP 65 million. I'll comment more on that on the next slide because it's more interesting, I think, to look at it on a half one, half two basis.
And then the RCT3 sale that Jonny already mentioned, in total, that was $7 million of income, $4 million upfront and $3 million coming deferred. Accounting rules made us recognize all that revenue upfront with a discounted cash flow on the trailing $3 million. So it'll take us quite a while, I think, to collect up that $3 million, but we've crystallized and recognized all of that gain in the year at $4.9 million. But clearly, we're highlighting it as something of an exceptional, so that we make sure we talk about the underlying performance, excluding that number as well. So moving on to the H1 , H2 split, and here I've put the preceding financial year on as well.
So starting with revenue, you can see that revenue has ticked down. Actually, in H2 , we had a much lower proportion from deals. Half one was very strong for deals. You know, you might remember that we had F1 Manager 2023 go into Game Pass, for instance. So once you strip out subscription deals, we actually grew in the revenue terms, underlying revenue terms in H2 versus H1 . So that's a great performance, considering as well that we released two games in the H1 , with F1 Manager 2023 and with Realms of Ruin. In the H2 , we had Planet Zoo Console come through, which is obviously a very pleasing performance. But the underlying portfolio, led by those CMS games and the PDLC, has delivered really well as well.
I know when you look at the revenue, you think we're ticking down, but actually underlying sales in the second half were up versus the first half. Gross profit, you know, again, slight difference there. Slightly stronger in the H1 because of the contribution from subscription deals, but very happy with the 68% in half two. I think the other big thing to highlight on this slide is the cash OpEx. You can see we were running at sort of mid- to high-GBP 30 million on a half-year basis, and we brought that down to GBP 27 million in the H2 , so that excludes any restructuring costs.
That's the underlying sort of cash cost, and that obviously positions us well to be able to get back into profit on both an IFRS and an adjusted EBITDA basis, hence the statement we make in the RNS about being confident of achieving a profit. We probably will have high levels of marketing spend in this H1 with Planet Coaster 2 coming through, so I don't think it'll be quite as low as maybe the 27, but certainly on a full- year basis, our cost base is now probably at the high 50 millions of OpEx on a cash basis. Then just moving on to the IFRS numbers. I'm not gonna run through all of these, 'cause a lot of these are duplicated by the slide earlier.
I've put a box around some of the ones I'm gonna talk about, so as usual, IAS 38 with the capitalization of dev costs and then the amortization or, in our case, sometimes the impairment of those costs has come through. So percentage capitalized has fallen to just below 60%. There's a combination of factors there. Some of that is relating to F1, where we decided not to capitalize any costs given the financial challenges, the commercial challenges of that franchise overall. And the other one is Realms of Ruin. You know, moving people on to other projects has maybe taken a little while. Of course, we were planning for success there with a fairly long program of PDLC and nurturing. So moving those people across, we are, and we do have a lower percentage.
That will tick up again in this year, maybe not quite to the level of FY 2023, so somewhere in the sixties, I think. On amortization, then you might remember that FY 2023, we changed our amortization profiles, and we accelerated the amortization towards the launch, and you can see that in the last couple of years, actually, FY 2023 and FY 2024. So for FY 2025, the amortization number will be coming down. Although we have Planet Coaster 2 launching, the underlying amortization overall in this financial year will be lower. And then impairments, you know, we've had two years of pretty big impairments there. Of course, the previous year was F1 and Foundry titles, and the impairment in FY 2024 is for Realms of Ruin, which we've already talked about before.
Other items to highlight there is the income tax credit, so video games tax relief, and some other credits are still very beneficial for us in terms of cash flow. In the income statement, we've recognized seven, and we'll talk about the cash flow in a minute, but I would think that we're looking at probably at least GBP 5 million of cash inflow from tax credits per year, which obviously is very helpful, and we don't put that in the adjusted EBITDA. That's on top. Oops, moving on to onto the cash flow then. This is on an adjusted basis, so again, I'll highlight the tax number there, just over GBP 10 million of cash coming in from various tax credits, mainly VGTR.
That's two years of returns in the UK, so we posted the FY 2022 and FY 2023 returns and got those cash receipts in. And that's obviously been a big factor in the cash generation, particularly in the second half, where we've increased cash in half two by about GBP 12 million, finished the year at almost GBP 30 million, and we're sitting now at the end of August at GBP 28.5 million. I think Jonny mentioned it earlier, you know, we're feeling good about our cash position and the future for that. Jonny, I'll pass back to you to talk a bit more about CMS.
Yeah. Thank you. So I think the question is, why, why, why are we pivoting to this CMS strategy? I think Alex's slide five, which is the cumulative cash flow, is really the most poignant. It basically shows that they make money, and Planet Coaster have enough three hundred and fifty percent return on investment is amazing. But I want to say why, why, you know, why, why Frontier? Why Frontier to do the CMS-focused focused strategy? So the first one is proven track record. You know, we've been making games about, you know, these CMS games, about coasters and animals for over 20 years.
You know, it's really in our DNA, and I don't think it's the development which is the most important part, because I do think we did execute on Realms of Ruin and the Formula One management games. They're actually good games. The most important thing was just audience insight, understanding how big that audience is, understanding how the game can attach to that audience, and how we can manage that long tail. That is what we really have learned over those twenty years. The other thing I like about CMS games is the subject matter really lends itself to PDLC. You know, if you look, for example, at Planet Zoo, there are so many animals in the world that we can keep...
There's always gonna be a top ten players, players ones, more coasters being launched, dinosaurs being discovered all the time, and I think that's really important, that those long tails, those amazing sustain rates, don't happen by accident. It really is an investment in Frontier to make content that delights our players, and, you know, obviously they spend their hard-earned cash. The other thing I'd like to use this slide to sort of counter is that, you know, I hear questions about, you know, can Frontier release these games, and negate cannibalization? And I think if you look at the four games in five years, which we show here, we believe that there isn't that much cannibalization.
But even if there was, and if the games are being cannibalized, and we're missing some of that data, the revenue that they're generating is absolutely, absolutely fine. The other point I'd like to make is, do sequels sell? And I'll be talking a lot about that with Planet Coaster 2, because it's a really fair question. But I think if you do a sequel correctly, it does sell, and again, I would illustrate Jurassic World Evolution 1 to Jurassic World Evolution 2. So I think there are the reasons. I'd say the final reason would be, and Alex normally makes this point, which is that this CMS genre is probably not appetizing for your Electronic Arts, your Ubisoft, because, you know, we're looking at five million, six million units sold, and they're looking for 10 or 20.
And it's probably out of the reach of the independents, who will not bring that level of quality and that technical know-how to deliver games where there's lots of creativity. So I think we sit in this really nice layer, where we're not threatened by the big boys or the indies. But you know, I do think that our CMSs are successful for a reason, and that's why I want us to stick to it, because I think the template, the theme, it's proven. It's a golden template. Alex, do you wanna move to the next slide, please? And then this slide here may not be the greatest looking slide, apologies, but what it does, it actually puts our next three games on one slide. You know, Planet Coaster 2 launching this autumn.
You know, again, I'll talk a bit about that, but I'm very excited about it. We've got this third Jurassic World game that we've announced, and then we've got that future CMS game, which is gonna be tantalizingly still unannounced. But it really shows us this visibility of our roadmap as we move forward. You know, we have planned ahead, and I think, you know, when we execute on these CMS games, we'll get back to where we were at our zenith, you know, four or five years ago. If you move to the next slide, Alex, I can start talking about the new games in detail, so yeah, Planet Coaster 2, so obviously we're all very excited about this.
We announced in July, and what was quite interesting about the announce is that we had 5.7 million trailer views if you add all the aggregators together. You know, you put this into... I know it's only anecdotal evidence, but compared to our other, you know, big, big launches at the beginning of the year, the reception has been amazingly positive. You know, we've showed it at Gamescom, and again, this is anecdotal evidence, but everybody who came through and did that 20-minute demo, none of them bounced off it. They didn't leave five minutes into it saying, "It's not the game for me." Every single one, and I mean every single one, played it, played it to the end.
The next point I really want to make, I think is really important, because I think it has to be true for Planet Coaster 2, and it has to be true for the next Jurassic game. For a true sequel, you can't cheat the player. And the way I look at it, and I can't take all the credit for it, because what I'm gonna say is something that has been... If you ever read a book by Sid Meier, who made Civilization games, he coins this phrase, "the rule of thirds," about making a sequel. And I think it is important to go through this, because I think it really outlines our strategy as we move forward, how we're going to have that same success we had with Jurassic World Evolution 1 to Jurassic World Evolution 2.
Rule of Thirds. The first third is the familiar, keeping the essence of what players fell in love with. You know, also saves a little bit of money, if you're not throwing out the baby with the bathwater. But it's really important to make sure that game feels familiar to the players, as I say, it's what we want. The second one is innovation, second third. So you need to plus what's in there. So in the case of Planet Coaster 2, we really want to improve that customization. We wanna have deeper management, and we want to have more ways to share, and that's exactly what we're doing. The third one is the standout feature, something which can be grasped in one sentence. So for Planet Coaster 2, it's water parks and all that fluid gameplay.
Now, interestingly, when we did the announce, you know, you would think that everybody would, you know, sort of look at this, the water park, and say, "Wow, that's amazing." And one of the things that we were, we weren't concerned with, but the reason why I believe in this rule of thirds, is that people were, you know. There was a risk that people would say, "Why isn't it an expansion pack?" It's that second third, that innovation, looking at what the players want, getting that feedback in there, that better customization. Better paths, plazas, you know, just deeper management. I think that's where people suddenly realize that this is, this is a sequel, and it's something that they really need, need to own.
But I do think, and I know I've gone off piste here a little bit, but I think it's really, really important that when you're doing a sequel, you don't keep the players. I'll get off my soapbox and go on to the next slide, shall I, Alex?
Yeah. Okay.
We talk about Jurassic World Evolution. This is our best-selling franchise to date. It's grossed, you know, round about GBP 250 million. It has really resonated with players. What we want to do with the third iteration of a Jurassic game is we want to leverage that brand awareness. I believe that they're really going big on this. Again, this is not insider knowledge, it's just reading, you know, all the hype around it.
You know, the film director is Gareth Edwards, who did Rogue One, you know, a really well-renowned film director. The screenwriter is David Koepp, the person who wrote the original Jurassic Park with Michael Crichton, and the leading actor is Scarlett Johansson, so I think they're going big, and we need to be part of that story. You know, we need to really leverage the furore that's going to be around this film, and I think, you know, next year is going to be the year of Jurassic, and we want to be part of that. Again, I can't really say what features are going to be in, but we are definitely applying a rule of thirds.
You know, there's gonna be the familiar, lots of things we want to improve, and we think we've got two standout features which the players have been wanting, and so if you went on Reddit, I'd be pretty sure that we, we'd be capturing exactly what they want the next iteration of the game to be. So again, very exciting for this. You know, again, as I say, to do another Jurassic game is a privilege, and we need to work very hard to make sure it's as successful as the first two. Final slide, Alex. Do you wanna do the first part?
Yep. I'll do the first bit, and you can, you can then wrap up, so-
Yeah.
I think we call out in the RNS, you know, we've had an encouraging start to this financial year, particularly with the CMS games, delivering across, you know, June, July, and August. We have a clear plan, as Johnny's articulated, here, very CMS-focused, and we've got a sustainable cost base as well, having taken those actions in the H2 . Analyst consensus as we've added it up, before these results, was about GBP 88 million for this year, and, you know, very comfortable with that level of revenue.
What we wanna do is get back over 100 again, but I think it's sensible to be cautious for right now, and the other statement there in the RNS on the outlook is we are confident of delivering profit in this financial year, and that's both on an adjusted EBITDA and on an IFRS basis. So we will get there. Jonny?
Yeah, yeah. We are absolutely right to be cautious, but I do believe that this is our strongest-ever pipeline. You know, CMS games, I do believe we know how to make, and I do believe with our track record, we really do know how to engage with the players. It started Planet Coaster 2, which is gonna be releasing this autumn. It's very important, and the signs are very positive. You know, doing a Jurassic World game based around when the film, you know, in the window when the film will be present, I think is very, very important, and the final CMS game, I know we haven't announced it, and people are very curious about it, but it's in development.
It's in full pre-production, and again, I think, you know, I'm very excited for that game, so yeah, I want to just finish that. I do believe it's our strongest-ever pipeline, and we've managed to manipulate the business to set these really strong foundations, and it's all about execution for the next few years.
Great. Thanks, Jonny. Okay, we're gonna open up to questions now, so I'm gonna stop sharing, and then we'll pop back into the slides as we need to, where they help to answer a question. So, having a look at the hands up, Casper, I think you're first.
Brilliant. Thanks a lot, guys. Yeah, just a couple from me quickly. First, I think in the statement, you mentioned a 96% sustain rate on Planet Coaster, which is already very impressive, given zero new content added for that franchise. What are the sort of aggregate sustain rates across the CMS games, inclusive of Planet Zoo's success reporting across to console? And then secondly, Planet Coaster, I know the 6.2 million unit sales. What percentage of penetration do you see for Planet Coaster 2 of that base, and also, do you think that's the right way to think about it? That'd be great.
Okay, shall I take the first one on sustain rates then?
Mm.
So just to explain what we mean by sustain rate, we're talking about the revenue versus the preceding year, so if revenue has gone down 10%, let's say, we'd quote a sustain rate of 90%. So Casper asked about the CMS numbers there, so I mentioned already, Planet Zoo actually grew overall because of the launch on console. If you just look at PC, it was almost 90% sustain. Planet Coaster, as we talked about already, was 96%, so across the portfolio there of CMS games, it averaged out about 90%, but that did include console. If we take console out, it was about 80%, so you know, a very strong level of sales, particularly with such a meaningful number to start with, for both Jurassic World Evolution 2 and Planet Zoo.
And then the second question was about the Planet Coaster units and the-
Do you want me to take a bit of that?
Sure, yep.
Yeah, I'll take a little bit of that. So I, Casper, I do think it's the right way of looking at it, you know, 6.2 million on PC. Our aim, our goal is to, you know, surpass that. Again, we need to be very cautious about what we say. You know, again, it's all about really managing expectations, but a few things which I'd probably point out, and it goes back to Alex's slide five, that cumulative cash is we want to be closer to that green line of Planet Zoo, and how are we going to do that? Again, we're doing a simultaneous launch on PC and console. We're gonna have probably not announced, so probably I would suspect we're gonna be doing a deluxe pack. We're gonna be...
You know, again, I think we'll be following the same monetization strategy of that cadence of PDLCs, which we increased the frequency on Planet Zoo. So that's where we want to be. Obviously, you know, in models, I think we need to be quite prudent, but that's our expectation. You know, again, maybe slight counters to that is that the market may be slightly more congested. Maybe money is a little bit tighter. There isn't that COVID bubble, but we want to really surpass what we've done on Planet Coaster 1 over time. So I think that's our expectation. Alex, and then if you want to add to that?
I think that's a good answer. Yeah, move on to the next one.
Brilliant. Thanks.
Thanks, Casper. James?
... Oh, hi. Yes, hi. Yeah, a couple of questions from me, please. Just on the commercial events, the sales events that you did this year, not the sale of the publishing rights, but the sales. What were the biggest learnings you got from those during the year? Was it sort of the strength of the relationship with Steam? Was it the use of data, and was it the reception of PC1 relative to PC2, going forward? And how will you ensure that you either meet or beat those commercial successes during 2025?
Okay. Sorry, yeah, go on.
Oh, sure, yeah. Sorry, and then on Planet Zoo, obviously nice to see that it's now the, you know, the highest cash generative game out there, but I guess there are two things from that. What does that tell you about the demand for CMS on console specifically? Because obviously, you know, with PCT, you're launching them both, you know, launching it but at the same time, will that be your strategy going forward? How should we think about that? And then I guess finally, just on the longevity of that game, given your point around animals, there's always those ones there. How has your view of the longevity of Planet Zoo changed over the past couple of years? Thanks.
Do you want to do the first one?
Sure
... I can do the second one.
Yeah, I'll take the first one. To just repeat the question there, it was around what were the learnings on, on price promotions? Certainly a big one is the importance of featuring. You know, sitting on the top of the Steam website in a carousel is incredibly valuable, so while I think the seasonal sales are always gonna be important, they can be a bit of a feeding frenzy, as so many games on sale. So that's why I think Jonny already mentioned that the April publisher sale that we had on Steam was our second-best ever, only surpassed by Christmas 2020, which of course benefited from COVID. So the benefit we get when we're in a maybe a smaller sale or something specific to us with all that featuring and top of carousel activity is really very valuable.
We'll always continue to participate in all the promotions, but what's encouraging about the CMS roadmap is that our partners, both Steam and Microsoft and PlayStation, are obviously very excited. Jonny has already said, you know, there's not many companies that make these kind of games. They're quite different to a lot of the shooters or the RPG games that are out there. That means, first of all, great potential for extra featuring and extra support. I think the other thing that we certainly don't want to price into numbers, but we think is a real potential upside is subscription deals. You know, they were valuable for us last year and always will be.
But the CMS portfolio I think is quite special in terms of its unique position to reach a lot of different people, particularly, you know, the slightly more family-friendly audience. So I think subscription deal-wise, I think we're well set. Next question I think was about Planet Zoo and the cash generation and console split. Shall I take that one, Johnny, and then maybe you do the-
Yeah, I might do a little addendum, too, but if you
Sure.
Yeah.
So, it's always difficult to assess the overall audience when we have a split launch for both the Planet games. We obviously went PC and then console later. If we look at Jurassic, actually, it's slightly weighted towards console, which is pretty unusual, particularly for a what you would describe as a management game. To have more units sold on console is quite unusual. I think the IP probably lends itself to being very accessible for people, and maybe a bit more weighting towards the U.S. as well, which probably pushes it towards console. So we do think that the Planet games will always be, you know, a bigger share on PC.
I think a reasonable rule of thumb might be sort of 60/40 or maybe even two-thirds, one-third, and obviously we're gonna be finding out what that looks like very shortly with Planet Coaster 2, but as ever, each time we launch a new CMS, a lot of effort goes into the onboarding for the player, making it as easy as possible, so an engaging way of teaching people, you know, not forcing them to do a tutorial that feels like a tutorial, but gently leading their hand through the game, so Planet Coaster, you know, even I managed to play Planet Coaster 2 at Gamescom, although Jonny was very disparaging about my park, it-
Constructive criticism.
Constructive creative criticism. It's very easy to get into, and I think that will lend itself well to consoles, and as already mentioned, the subscription point, that could open up consoles even further. Jonny, do you wanna finish up on anything there?
Yeah, I just wanted to make one point. I can't believe I keep referring back to your Q and to cash flow chart. If you look at the tick up on Planet Zoo when we launched console, it is very similar to what we were sort of talking about in previous sort of presentations, that it would be similar to that of Planet Coaster. You know, what I really like about our CMS games is the predictability. You know, we have the data so that we can use that data in our forecasting, and I think that's just really important, and that's just one minor point. I think Alex's point is probably stronger, but again, I just wanted to highlight that.
Maybe if I move on to the next question after that, and so the next question.
Yeah
... was about the longevity of Planet Zoo, and why are we doing more of these PDLCs? Again, it's a great question, and we're always measuring, so this is all about franchise management. So at the moment, you know, again, I'm gonna talk about this predictability, this return on investment. Every time we launch a Zoo PDLC, the players really engage with it. They cry out for more, they give us ideas for the next one, and they spend the money on it, so this is just a really good business model, and as you can see on that green line, why that sustain rate is so very strong.
There will come a time when maybe, you know, that attach does lower, and we need to look at what we're gonna do with that franchise in the future. A great example, which we maybe got wrong, was Planet Coaster. Perhaps Planet Coaster, we should have continued doing PDLC for a little bit longer, then stop, and then, you know, obviously we're gonna be doing Planet Coaster 2. So it's all about... I think we extend the life cycle of our games, so that's what we have learned. But there is a time where you need to then move on to the next project, and again, another example would be, you know, Jurassic World Evolution 1 to Jurassic World Evolution 2. But isn't it great to have people wanting more content for your game?
That's the, you know, that's the holy grail, and this is where I think our CMS games deliver, and, you know, it's just so nice to give players what they want, and that virtuous circle that they then give us some money for it, and we can keep that journey going. So yeah, that's, you know, what I think on what Planet Zoo is showing us with PDLC.
Uh, Patrick?
Yeah, thanks. A couple of questions from me. Any comments on pre-orders on Planet Coaster 2? Secondly, with the imminent arrival of second Switch, what angles are there on JWE 3, Planet Coaster 2, in terms of support for that console? And lastly, when you look at Planet Coaster 2 relative to when you launched back in 2016, what are you seeing different in terms of what players are saying about the game? Is it more positive or less positive in terms of the amount of time players are engaging with the title? I know you've mentioned the stats around players finishing it, but yeah, I'd just be curious relative to what you saw pre the launch of Planet Coaster 1 as well.
Any comments on the console end of it, what players are saying in terms of the beta testing on that? Thanks.
Okay, quite a few questions. I think I heard most of them. I think your first question was about VR for Planet Coaster 2. Is that what you heard, Jonny?
Unfortunately, Patrick, you were cutting out. Honestly, I've got every other word, so I'm just trying to join them together.
I think Patrick asked about whether we're supporting VR on Planet Coaster 2.
Sorry, it was, No, on Planet Coaster-
Oh.
Yeah.
Sorry, Patrick, we're not getting too much of that, but I definitely heard the question about Switch. So Jurassic World Evolution 3 and Planet Coaster 2, whether there's some potential there for Switch. Clearly, we just launched F1 on Switch. Overall, you know, slightly disappointed in terms of the performance there and the engagement. I think Switch is probably quite a challenging platform because first-party Nintendo games do very well, but there isn't always so much support for other games. We are pleased with the overall performance of Jurassic World Evolution 1 on Switch, but I think it's likely that for the third Jurassic game, we'll be focusing on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation.
Then Jonny, there was a question about Planet Coaster 2 versus Planet Coaster 1 and how people are engaging, I think, maybe with launch content, videos, and assets and so on. I think you've been encouraged by what you've seen from the reaction from the community there.
Yeah, I've been very, very encouraged. Again, you know, again, just, you know, people's response to the announcement trailer was really strong. At Gamescom, we are doing quite a lot behind closed doors, which we're gonna be releasing that content when we actually announce when pre-orders are, which we're not ready to announce yet, so I'm getting information from that. I think people, one of the things which, again, this is a strange. I'm gonna do a strange, anecdotal piece here, because I do think it's important, is feedback, and this was going on last night, we were doing many interviews, is people are being openly positive about it. So normally when you present to game press, they, you know, play their cards close to their chest.
I think people are looking at Planet Coaster and smiling. You know, we have nailed the features that they want, the things they wanted to be improved, and they are just loving the joy of the water parks. So, you know, this is not empirical data, this is all anecdotal, but the vibe is good, and the vibe, if I'm being honest, it is better than Realms of Ruin, really better than Formula Manager 2023, which was, yes, people were enjoying it, but this seems to be more universal. I think Alex made a really good point about the approachability of the game as well. You know, when your CFO can build a park, you're doing something good. So yeah, I am very encouraged that...
I'm enjoying playing it as well, which is more a bad thing.
Yeah, I think we'll-
Okay
... we'll move on, and we might come back to you, Patrick, if the connection improves. So we'll move to Will.
Yeah, thanks for the presentation, guys. Just a couple from me. Firstly, is there anything different that you're doing in the marketing strategy with Planet Coaster 2? And I guess to that point, when can we expect marketing to ramp, and actually how much are you looking specifically to spend on that? And I guess, you know, coming back to your point there, Jonny, about, you know, Planet Coaster 1, Planet Coaster 2, have you done any analysis of sort of Wishlist or follower numbers of sequels and sort of... I guess, could you frame that in the context of where we are for Planet Coaster 2? And then secondly, what can we think about gross R&D for FY 2025?
Okay, so I think the first one was about marketing strategy for Planet Coaster 2. Jonny, do you wanna-
Yeah
... take that one? I know, I know we had quite an interesting Twitch video campaign, didn't we?
Yeah, again, I think this illustrates, you know, one of the things I said very early on is when we were doing this organizational review, the challenge I set to everyone is, how do we do more with less? And I think publishing has definitely stepped up to the plate. There's what we want to do is shorter, sharper, and own the narrative. So rather than spending, you know, or investing lots of money to be on various sort of, you know, the opening show at Gamescom, we want to have our own narrative and really push that. So as Alex said, the announce support was very clever, and that worked very well. We're going to go big on this pre-order. So again, this is what we've been working on at the moment, so we're gonna obviously have pre-order trailer.
We're gonna have lots of content from various magazines. Again, they've come in and we're gonna have some front covers. We're doing lots of work with the evangelists, and all this is gonna drop at the same time. Again, a big bang to start off this pre-orders, and then when we go to launch, there'll be another big bang there. I think the advantage that we'll have is that we're leveraging this brand awareness. You know, we have people following this game. You know, I see some people following it all the way back in the day from RollerCoaster Tycoon 3. It's such a head start compared to starting a new brand with Formula One and with Realms of Ruin. So yeah, more or less, and there are gonna be some big bangs on it.
So far I've been very, very pleased with the coverage that we're getting.
Yeah, so we don't wanna hint too much, but, you know, you can imagine that in the next, maybe even in the next few days, the ramp up might start with, maybe pre-orders. So we've as we've already hinted at with the autumn launch, if you look at when we've gone with games before, that early November period is typical for us, so it's not hard to guess where we might be going with that. Then you asked about the spend on marketing, so, likely that the launch marketing is probably somewhere over GBP 2 million to support Planet Coaster 2. We've already spent some of that clearly with Gamescom. But as Johnny said, you know, it's very much more, angling on the digital side.
You'll see that ramp up start in earnest pretty soon. Wishlist data, there's a question on that. Always a bit of a dangerous one, 'cause Wishlists were actually pretty strong for Realms of Ruin, so they're not always a great indicator. But I think we're encouraged so far when we look at Wishlists versus Planet Zoo, for instance. You know, it does look encouraging, but the real data starts to come in from pre-orders, but ultimately it's the actual launch of the game that's the critical thing. Jonny, I don't know whether you've got anything else to mention on that one?
Yeah, yeah. Again, obviously, we monitor the Wishlist. I think, not trying to give any excuses, one of the challenges is that we are comparing apples with oranges because, you know, with Planet Coaster 1, we had alpha, various alpha builds. Planet Zoo, we had pre-orders, but, you know, again, when I was looking roundabout Gamescom. Well, looking all the time, but Gamescom, we were definitely ahead with Planet Coaster 2 on Planet Zoo, which again, was very encouraging, by a good percentage as well. But Alex is right, it's all about people parting with their hard-earned cash. You know, don't want to be seduced by Wishlists, really.
Um, Katie?
Thank you. Regarding Planet Coaster 2, did that start out as downloadable content that just grew and eventually became too big, so it became a sequel? And kind of what's that tipping point? Then thinking about other games in the portfolio, like Planet Zoo, is the scope then to get sequels or... Just kind of that thinking around the balance between content and sequels. And then the second one is just on how far can you push the Jurassic World franchise? How reliant are you on future film releases, or actually does this kind of tail off, and it provides a blueprint for potential other licensed IPs?
Yeah, good, good, cool questions. Do you want me to take them, Alex?
Yeah, happy to.
Right, right. So Planet Coaster 2, it didn't grow out of a PDLC. We knew that water parks would be very big, a really big investment, both from a technological point of view and from a just a gameplay point of view. Again, you know, the inspiration comes. I'm not, you know, people think I'm a genius when it comes to Planet Coaster games and rollercoaster games. I just do what Walt Disney did, and he added water parks to Disneyland, and the rest is history. So it was really a fundamental change to build the things that we wanted to build on it. There's lots of systems underneath which have been changed.
You know, one of the big things, which again, players are actually reacting really well to, is a new pathing system, and if you go on any of the forums, the two biggest criticisms of Planet Coaster was performance, which again, that's a whole essay in itself. If players can put infinite objects down, it is gonna slow down, I guess. And the other one was pathing, and so what we've done is we've revolutionized that, tied it into the pool system, so you can now have plazas, and so your theme parks are just gonna look amazingly creative. So that's how we think about all our games. It's making sure it's rule of thirds, so, you know, third is the familiar. It doesn't mean necessarily it's 100% the same code.
The other third is innovating these features that people really want, and that's the meat of the game, and then finding out what this real killer feature is or killer features. Yeah, that's how the Planet Coaster 2 was created. Second question was, can you remember, Alex?
About Jurassic. It's about Jurassic and how reliant are we on films. Clearly-
Yeah
... where you're paying for an IP, and it's a film IP, having an IP event, like a film launch, is really very helpful, and that was the plan with all three games, right? I mean, the second game, because of COVID, the movie ended up getting pushed out a whole year, and so we needed to change plans. We went for that double bounce strategy with the launch, then following up with film content, which actually was very successful in the end. But clearly ideal is you go much closer to the movie and get the benefits for that. So that's not to say that in the future we wouldn't consider doing another Jurassic game that maybe fell between films or something, but ideal if we can get that movie tie-in.
Yeah, I think, just to add a little bit, quite interestingly, when we work with Universal, they think of it as its own franchise. It's actually now a franchise within Universal, the Jurassic World Evolution games, and so they have their own characters, and I think we're pretty smart the way we managed to tie it back into films or film content, which is launched at a later date, so it all feels soft canon. But I do think the game is standing on its own feet now. I think we have really got amazing sort of brand awareness, and we're just bringing new, you know, Jurassic experiences to players.
So yeah, it's been a really interesting sort of journey working on that game, and you know, the evidence is that players really really like it, and it's done very well for us.
Brilliant. Thank you. Let's go to Jasmine.
Morning, guys. I guess this kind of follows on slightly from Katie's question, but obviously you've outlined the CMS refocus, and you've talked a lot about how successful those games are, but the first two installments for 2025, 2026 are titles and franchises where you have an existing audience, which helps to kind of de-risk that process to a degree. So if we're thinking further ahead, what are the processes you have in place around thinking of either new internal own IP that's developed, kind of created, by your own teams, or also new license deals?
And kind of also thinking along the lines of if the Formula One and Warhammer partnerships were slightly less successful than what you've seen with Jurassic World and, if we're thinking about future projects, are there any learnings or any kind of particular guardrails that you're gonna put around those projects?
So I think Jasmine was very generous there saying that Realms of Ruin and F1 may be slightly below Jurassic levels. Clearly, Jurassics and Jurassic Games have been incredibly successful, and those other titles, particularly Realms of Ruin, has fallen short. I don't think you can blame the IP necessarily too much, maybe some element of that, I suppose, with the IP within Warhammer, the Age of Sigmar IP. But overall, I think it's making the right decision and knowing the audience, and clearly with the CMS games, we're very good at that. I think that we don't want to say too much about FY2027.
I don't know whether you're being sneaky with your question to try and trap us into to revealing what it is, but clearly we already know and we're developing that game. It is something which aligns well with an area we think we'll be successful with, and we're not confirming whether it's got a license or whether it's own IP. So Jonny, I don't know whether you want to say any more, but obviously be careful, because-
I'm not, I'm not gonna say any more-
Yeah
... about the third one. I've already had my knuckles wrapped on that. There's a really interesting point about sequels, and this is actually, you know, a conversation that we have internally. I think sequels are, can be amazing. You know, you look at films, the Star Wars trilogies, Lord of the Rings. You look at games where Sid Meier is gonna be releasing Civilization VII, and the amount of furore that's getting is amazing. If you do the sequel well, you're extending that experience, that world, that players just spend, you know, their life playing. So I think it is... I just don't want to belittle them. I actually want to celebrate and champion them, providing you invest correctly in them, and if you get it right, it does de-risk.
If you get it wrong, it probably does. It could add risk, as you know, how many Eddie Murphy movies have not been successful the second time around? Actually, yeah, a few. That's not the point I'm trying to make. They're positive. So, you know, again, I just don't want to belittle sequels. What I will say is that our selection process is so much more rigorous now. Again, you know, the reasons why F1 Manager and Realms of Ruin didn't are not the same success as our Planet games is that there are certain things we just didn't understand. You know, I still think from an engineering point of view, we executed on them pretty well. It's just the market wasn't there.
The intersection between, you know, Formula One sort of fans and people who like really technical games was small, and we just, you know, we captured a lot of them, but the market wasn't big enough. So what I would say is the next game and the game after that, because we're in a green light process for the one, our fourth game, we are really doing a lot of measuring, and part of that is understanding what a Frontier game is. You know, again, we want these games to have long tails. We want to be able to launch post that, you know, paid downloadable content. We want them to have, like, a core set of evangelists. The subject matter has to match the game.
The game needs to be intelligent, and all these things then need to go into the calculation and see if the addressable audience is there. So I know it sounds like I'm waffling along, but it's trying to give some confidence that we're taking our selections more seriously, because we just can't do things on intuition and, you know, comparative analysis. You know, F1, we were saying, "Well, if it's the same as Football Manager, then it's gonna be a growing franchise," and it's a very compelling hypothesis, but the data there just didn't convert into theory. So being a lot more strict about how we're choosing things.
I do think the game that we have coming out in FY2027 fits that, and we're gonna make sure that the one coming out the year after that, or whenever that will be, is going to fit that, too.
Any more questions? I appreciate we've taken a bit more time, having started a bit late, but anyone else want to pop up with a final question? So thank you all for your time on the call. Much appreciated. Thanks for your questions. I'm sure we'll see some of you maybe on the roadshow in the next few days, but if anyone has any follow-ups, just reach out to me directly, and we can deal with those. Thanks for your time.
Yeah. Thank you, everyone.