Welcome everyone to our FY 2023 Results Presentation. It's really, really good to see you, and it's really a good opportunity to run through what we're doing. I'm gonna run through the strategic headlines first. We'll explore all these points in greater depth during the presentation, and then at the end of it, we'll have a Q&A, which I'm hoping is gonna be as interactive as they normally are. So just going through those first 4 points. So our portfolio of games released before financial year 2023 continues to deliver. You know, again, this really just shows how successful our previous projects have been, and that's gonna be a running theme as we run through this presentation, because as we move forward, that's what we're looking back to. We want to stick to our mission.
Sales of Formula One Manager have been below expectations. We're not giving up on that project at all, and we'll talk a little bit more about that. We had our first acquisition of Complex Games, which was completed in November 2022, and it's really amazing to work with the creators of Chaos Gate, and I think they're a really good cultural fit for our company, and I expect great things from them. Finally, we're really excited about our Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin, first RTS, which was released on November the 17th. Hopefully some people on this call will have seen it at Gamescom and actually had some hands-on on it. As I say, we're very excited.
Then I really want to talk, you know, really about the, you know, you know, our strategy sort of moving forward and, you know, where, where we've come from. We have refocused and reset our strategy. Some tough decisions, but we closed Foundry in June. We're gonna really concentrate on making the games we know how to make. To that point, I'm really pleased that we've announced that we have two creative management simulation games in, in development. You know, I think in the past we have demonstrated that these can be very, very successful. We know how to make them, we know how to sell them, we know there's an addressable audience. Then the final point is really important, and I see a lot of commentary on it, and it really, it just shows how much we acknowledge it.
We have 900 people, and we've got to get a better return on investment. You know, we really, really need to drive this and maximize it, and so to this end, we are reviewing our resources, our processes, and leadership, and going really, really deep on it. So again, this is a, you know, continuing of the work in progress, but this is a real strong push to generate that ROI. Alex, I think I'll move to you, if that's okay?
Yep. Thanks, Jonny. So moving on to the financial results for last year. In June, we provided that trading update, and the two first lines here are in line with that update. So revenue at GBP 104.6. We guided to 104, so it's just a little bit above that. As Jonny says, you know, great performance from the existing portfolio, and a decent contribution as well from F1 Manager last year. PDLC was particularly important for Jurassic and Planet Zoo. Adjusted EBITDA loss of 4.6, so again, that's slightly better than we guided. We guided to about GBP 5 million loss, so we're just a little bit better there.
So the loss versus the profit in the preceding year, of course, we've got a lower level of revenue, and we're continuing to invest and grow the business, so we had an increase in R&D costs, so that's the main reason for that loss in the year. You know, we're scaling up to make two games per year, to release two games per year, and that requires an investment. Then we have the non-cash intangible asset charges, so everyone knew already about the closure of Foundry. The Foundry game portfolio generally was pretty weak. You know, that's part of the reason that we closed it, and we had the write-offs there, which totaled GBP 13.7 million. We also then have the impairment charges for F1 Manager.
F1 Manager 2023 launched at the end of July. Jonny's gonna cover this in a bit more detail. The game is performing below last year's game. You know, we're still confident that it's gonna have a decent outcome, I think, for this year. But when we look at the... You know, engaging with the auditors and working through the FY 2023 numbers, although it's a game that's released after the year, and we have to go back and look at that asset value, you might remember that first game cost us about GBP 17 million to develop, so we created that franchise asset. So what we're really doing is writing off that franchise asset. You know, we still have a lot of confidence in the franchise looking ahead on a cash basis, when you ignore that sunk cost.
We can pick that up a bit more during the presentation and during questions. So because of those asset charges, we ended up with a reported operating loss of GBP 26.6 million, you know, pretty substantial number. But as I said earlier, no impact on cash profit outcomes. Cash at the end of the financial year was GBP 28 million. We would have grown cash actually in the year if we discount the acquisition of Complex and share charges, share acquisitions. At the end of August, we've got GBP 25 million on the balance sheet, so we're still well-capitalized and feeling good about that position. Okay, Jonny, I'll pass back to you.
Sure, thank you. Yeah, so I want to really talk about our established portfolio. So the headline is that 72% of our revenue for financial year 2023 was delivered with games launched before that financial year. This really illustrates how nurturing, or how our nurturing strategy maintains a strong and evergreen back catalog. Again, I know we've shied away from the word, from back catalog in the past, because a lot of our nurturing, but let's use the term back catalog because it is, you know, generating a large proportion of our revenues. Now, I think all of this feeds into our diversification of revenue streams. The more games we have contributing, I think it adds more stability to the business. I'm gonna run through the portfolio sort of line, line by line to give a little bit more insight.
So let's talk about Jurassic World Evolution 2. It delivered a great result in financial year 2023, with those two major film PDLCs. Also, we did the smaller PDLCs as well, which all contributed. Sales performance to date between Jurassic World Evolution and Jurassic World Evolution 2 is very similar over a corresponding period. And one of the things I'm really pleased with is how we managed to release the game with the film moving out due to the pandemic.
You know, again, maybe one day I'll write a Gamasutra article about it, on how you have to change a game design to remove all the spoilers because the film's coming out of the game, and then you do two massive DLCs to tie with the film, to put the narrative back in, and still manage to, as you'll see in the cumulative cash chart or in the cash chart, you'll see the revenue is now the same as is tracking the same as the original game. Anyway, I don't want to sort of brag too much about that, but it is something I'm very, very, very pleased with. Planet Zoo, so four new PDLC packs, plus all the additional DLC.
I'll be talking about how that strategy works, a little bit later on, and we celebrated our three-year anniversary with an update. You know, as usual, the sustain rate of Planet Zoo is among our strongest, and it has a sustain rate of around 80% between financial years 2022 and 2023. As with Jurassic World Evolution, there's gonna be more PDLC to come. Our players demand it, and we like it because we get a very nice ROI on it. We've just announced the Oceania Pack, which is coming out September the nineteenth, and for the first time, you're gonna be able to play the adorable quokka. Homework question: look up what a quokka is and see how adorable it is. It's very much requested by our players.
We continue to support Elite Dangerous, and we have seen good engagement continuing with that, with that game. And I think part of this is that we are bringing in the Thargoid Wars, which is where Thargoids are threatening the human bubble, and players are rallying together to try and thwart those attacks. Already mentioned that we acquired Complex Games, so Chaos Gate: Daemonhunters is delivering good performance. We have, again, a PDLC strategy for that, and that continues to sell well across the board. And then I want to talk about our Coaster games. Planet Coaster and RollerCoaster Tycoon are still selling well. In particular, the Planet Coaster community continues to thrive. That game is still selling, even though we're not actually creating any more PDLCs for it.
Obviously, there's a very strong back catalog, but what I really like is the creative sharing aspects are really fueling player engagement and giving new experiences for players to play. And what I'd really like to sort of just finish on this slide is that when I look at this back catalog, I know what good is. And what I mean by that is that you look at our Planet Zoos and our Planet Coasters and our Jurassics, these CMS games, they are still delivering. They had those lovely initial sales, but they're continuing to sell. And so when you tie this back to our overall strategy, you can see that why we're very excited by announcing that we're developing two more CMS games. Alex, if you want to... Oh, and next slide, aren't I, as well? Wow.
Yeah.
Yeah. Next slide, please. Sorry. So, yeah, talking about F1 Manager. So first, I'd like to say, I want to talk a little bit about F1 Manager 2022. So it is a great game. You know, it reviewed very well, and we have... You know, when players actually buy it, they are engaging with it and sticking with it. It's sold over 850,000 units, which I've been in the games industry long enough to know that once you're approaching 1 million, you don't take that for granted. That being said, we wanted sales over 1 million, and so, you know, that's why we are disappointed. You know, we have to acknowledge and hold our hands up that we're disappointed with performance. Moving on to F1 Manager 2023, we released that game.
It was scheduled, and we delivered it on time on the thirty-first of July. I also said in earlier presentations that we wanted to bring this game in earlier to have more of a meaningful season in the game, and we managed to do that by bringing it in one month earlier, which again, I'm very pleased about. The game has been positively received. It's got good critic reviews. What I really am pleased with is that the Race Replay has gained a lot of traction, both from players and called out in a lot of the reviews.
Just so everyone knows what Race Replay is, it's basically after a real Grand Prix happens, a small number of days later, we release, by using all the telemetry from that race, we actually allow the player to play key events in that from that Grand Prix using real data. I've just described that really badly, actually, but the best person who actually described it was Fernando Alonso when he, after the Monaco GP, when everybody's saying, "Oh, you should have pitted earlier because the rain came in," he basically said, "F1 is easy from the sofa." This is something where we are allowing armchair managers to see if they can do better as the team principal, better than the team principals. Again, you know, let's talk a little bit about sales.
So sales during pre-order were lower than last year, as Alex has alluded, well, not alluded to, has said. Sales post-launch should be more encouraging, but again, I need to set expectations that our current projections are lower sales than F1 22. All that being said, we haven't given up. We still have positive steps to maximize sales. We have a very strong post-launch strategy. So on that post-launch strategy, we've got updates, and so if people remember, have been following the F1 Manager franchise, players have been very critical that we haven't been supporting the game as much as they'd like. So together with Race Replay, we're gonna be releasing new features, new content. We're listening to, you know, all the feedback and trying to incorporate as much as that as we can in the game.
We've got promotions as well, some other revenue events, and, you know, we believe that we can. You know, our aim is to get people to return to the game who have previously bought F1 Manager '22, and it is still to attract new players. As I say, we're still looking at the franchise, really analyzing how it's sold, looking at better ways that we can monetize it, and we are developing our plans for 2024. And then, as Alex mentioned, you know, following that prudent assessment with the auditor, auditors, we're taking a GBP 15 million non-cash impairment charge for FY 2023. Alex, could you move to the next slide, please? Yeah. Realms of Ruin. Really excited about this game. You know, Realms of Ruin is truly a massive RTS game. I just want to say that.
Again, you've been seeing things in drips and drops. You know, you saw the beta show multiplayer. You would have seen some of the campaign levels if you'd gone to Gamescom. But we've recently re-revealed the full scope of the game, and it is massive, and so you're gonna see a big go-to-market campaign really showing you what the value proposition of what this game is. So I've itemized, you know, four of the pillars in there. I'll go through them, but I'll probably focus on the last one a little bit more. So obviously, it has a cinematic campaign, and it's a rich story. You know, it's real authentic to Warhammer.
It's written by Gav Thorpe, who's a Black Library author, so he writes actual official books about Age of Sigmar, and this is gonna really help, you know, really excite those core evangelists, which are the fuel for how the game is going to land. Comprehensive multiplayer, again, this is something that we're very proud about. It's multiplayer, which means console players can play against PC players. We've got 1v1, 2v2, and we've got... I've said AI in there. Let's call it bots because, again, we're gonna have an AI conversation in the questions, I'm sure, later on. Eternal Conquest Mode, this is procedurally generated lands.
This is, like, sort of, I won't call it infinite gameplay, but this is gonna really add to the play time, is that there's gonna be new ways to challenge that player in a single-player campaign, and every game is going to be different 'cause it's all procedurally generated, so we think this is gonna be a very, very big mode. And then finally, endless creativity. So what I really like about the best of our Frontier titles is allowing players to create experiences for other players. So endless creativity, you're gonna be able to build your levels, you're gonna be able to share them via our workshop, which works with PlayStation, Xbox, and PC, and really fuel that longevity of the game by people actually creating content for you. That's a dream, to get players to create content.
So you're gonna have to be able to play these levels. We've also got things called a scenery editor, where if you ever go to Warhammer World, you can see that people like to paint their figures, and you create these beautiful dioramas. You're gonna be able to do that in the game as well. And I think this is really important, as I said, to... It really, this generation of content and experiences fuels the long, long tail of our games. Moving on, a few things which, you know, I'm sure I've talked about in other presentations. We have exclusive rights to the Age of Sigmar brand. We, you know, when we were doing our, all our market analysis, market sizing, addressable audiences, you know, we really do believe that Warhammer IP is a proven enabler for RTS games.
You know, you look, I know it's quite different with 40K, but if you look at Dawn of War, with how many players that's managed to attract, you know, we think, you know, this is very, very important, that when you're launching an RTS for the first time, you need to have this enabler.
The next point, which I'll do, like, a little bit of preamble on, on this, sorry for going a little bit deep on this, but I do think, you know, this is a very big play for us, and we are very excited about it, is, you know, when we're looking at this addressable audience, we're looking at ways of maximizing it, and one of the things Frontier has been very successful in the past is bringing games to console, which aren't traditionally for a console, Planet Coaster, and obviously, the amazing success of Jurassic World Evolution. This is really, you know. It's good for two reasons. One, there's more players playing our game because there are more consoles, but two, further down, downstream, I think it always facilitates potential subscription deals because Sony and Microsoft want to acquire users.
They've got all the first-person users in the world. This is an opportunity for them to start trying to get new users who play different games which are traditionally on consoles. So I think it's a really big play. And so what we've done is that we've got traditional and innovative control systems, all with the aim of making sure that console players have like a parity of ability with PC players. One thing which you might have seen slightly tweaked on there is I am mentioning that we are doing traditional controls, because when we did that beta, we need to acknowledge the feedback of the players, and the PC players want to be able to deal with the familiar, which is mouse and keyboard. Great, you've got it.
In fact, if you plug a keyboard into console, you've got mouse and keyboard as well. But also, we've got this Direct Step, this innovative control system, which I think gives console players almost a competitive advantage. We've had highly positive reception from press and players, and you know, how we gather this information? So obviously, we've seen all the previews in PC Gamer, which was amazing copy. We do a lot of things, sort of, behind closed doors demos, where we get the press in, we get influencers, we get them to play the game, and that's been very, very positive. What's really interesting is that people have seen the incremental improvements and commented on them from that beta to the, the...
We did it in, I think it was, like, sort of middle of July, behind closed doors, and they're thinking that the developers are really listening. And then our hands-on event at the Gamescom stand, which again, I think landed very, very, very well, and then just finally, we're on schedule for releasing on the seventeenth of November. It's gonna be a simultaneous launch on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox Series X|S. And what you're gonna see is really the start of our go-to-market plan. We're really ramping it up. You know, Gamescom was just the start. I'm probably saying too much, but there's gonna be something released today, which will hopefully tie in with those four pillars that you've just seen, and then we've got various, you know, amazing beats going towards when we launch, launch the game.
Apologies for staying too long on that one, Alex, but it was important.
Okay.
Right, so next slide. So I'm gonna talk a little bit about this, and then Alex is going to jump on and talk some amazing numbers. So we talk a lot about our select, develop, and launch, and nurture model. And when we get it right, you can see those cash curves are exactly what we need. You know, you look at our Jurassic and Planet franchises. To me, this, again, I'm gonna keep using this phrase a lot, it shows me what good is. This is what we need to aspire to. This is what we need to repeat. This is our reset and refocus. This is what we need, we need to do. A few things I just wanna talk about on this.
So selection's very important, so I'm gonna talk about that on the next slide. But I wanna talk about nurture because that maintenance of those cash curves doesn't happen by accident, and I think it's just a really nice opportunity for me to just quickly run through why our games continue to sell. So the first one is you launch a Digital Deluxe version. So immediately, you know, people who are highly engaged with the game, they will spend a 10%-20% premium because they'll get that extra content, but that Deluxe pack doesn't go away. And our job is to try and convert people during the life cycle of the game to engage with the game, and then eventually, you know, upsell to that Deluxe version.
We continue to manage the sales channels and price promotions. So the first thing is we need to maximize discoverability. The great thing about selling games digitally is that they're always on the shelf. Those shelves now are 30,000 games long, and so we need to work with our partners and find ways of really invigorating that game. We've... I'll talk about a bit with PDLC, and PDLC to keep that visibility up there. We also need to sort of manage those discounts.
We basically use a cascade approach, which appeals to different cohorts of value-conscious players, so we keep flipping that price down, and that's, you know, as the game increases in this value proposition with that free DLC, which I'll talk about, and player creations, you know, you can see that more people are attached to it. Obviously, we release PDLC, you know, that almost speaks for itself. This is new content, new experiences for the game, keeps it alive and, you know, for many of our games, our players are actually demanding PDLC. That's exactly what we want. Free DLC, you know, people always say, "Why do you have free DLC? It's free." It's all about keeping player engagement, keeping those miles and dials up.
The more players you have playing your game, they are potential customers for your PDLC, or when various things, price drops happen on a PDLC, they'll buy it. Then the other thing, which I think, you know, people should realize, is that our most successful titles are games where our players create and share new experiences. This is why I'm very excited with that level editor for Realms of Ruin. You know, the dream is for players and ourselves all to work together to continually make new experiences and, you know, as in Planet Coaster, I think the players have actually made sometimes better experiences than what we do because they are that passionate, and they dedicate that amount of time.
So yeah, I just wanted to really explain how that nurture model, how much effort we put into it, and obviously, you can see the rewards. Alex, if you want to go into more detail with some of those projects, that would be awesome.
Yeah, sure. I'll just add a couple of points on top. So one point is we're always learning. You know, a good comparison here is looking at the blue line, which is Planet Coaster, versus the green line, which is Planet Zoo. So probably a similar-sized audience overall. You know, we went for a really good launch strategy, which gave us more revenue straight out of the gate with Zoo. And we'd learned from Planet Coaster that, you know, getting that mix of free versus PDLC content right is very important. We went with a lot of free content for the first 12 months, then introduced PDLC. With Planet Zoo, we went PDLC straight from the get-go. In, I think it was 40 days later, we had our first PDLC.
So you can see then the benefit of the learning that we applied to that model and how we can kick on and generate a substantial amount of revenue. We will generally only see a sort of tick up in terms of the growth rate of revenue when there's maybe an IP event or a PDLC event or maybe a new platform. So, you know, the Dominion film is a great example where we had a very successful PDLC pack. We also had a Game Pass deal for Jurassic World Evolution 2. On Jurassic World Evolution 1, we had the Jurassic Park PDLC, which was very strong at Christmas, and the Switch edition, that kicked it up.
And, you know, you might remember with Planet Coaster, we were on PC for quite a while, and then we came up, and we moved on to console, and that ticked us up. You know, the challenge over the recent few years is the investment we put into Odyssey. We really wanted to grow that line, increase the revenue quite substantially, and that's clearly where we're still hurting a bit because we don't have that ongoing sales. But Elite Dangerous is still doing pretty well, generating revenue, generating cash. It's just not that return on investment from Odyssey hasn't come through. So, F1 further down here, I think, you know, as Jonny mentioned at the start, we had a good launch there. We've reached a lot of people, I think a lot of the core audience.
We weren't able to maybe go as broad with that first game. With the second game, we've got some things, the Race Replay mode in particular, that broadens it. You know, there's a lot to go at with the rest of this season. We're still excited about this franchise, and it's got a good future. But obviously, with the accounting, we've had to take that impairment charge. But yeah, as Jonny says, this is what we aspire to, and the great thing is we've done it ourselves multiple times. You know, we need to get back to these sort of revenue curves. Back to you, I think, Jonny.
Yeah, sure. So this is a new slide, which... Yeah, I think it's a very important slide. Project selection, I really do think it's the make or break. I think it's the most crucial element of our model. I know you're only as strong as your weakest link, but if you don't get this selection right, you really are... you're fighting a losing battle, to be perfectly honest. And so here is an, you know, a synopsis of what I believe a Frontier game is and how it maps to making a great game, but more importantly, how it maps to, you know, engaging with a lot of players who will spend money, and hence our return on investment.
So I'm gonna go through a few of these and maybe illustrate with some examples. So the first one is exploit underserved viable niches that match our expertise. What is a viable niche? A viable niche is something which has been proven to have between 1 and 5 million players. Match our expertise means that we can leverage Cobra and all our code, and all our experience over 30 years of development, that there are... You know, we've solved many of these problems. You know, a great example of this would be Planet Coaster. You know, RollerCoaster Tycoon 3, we knew there was a market, we knew how much that sold, we knew we had the expertise to deliver it as well.
We knew the time was right because it was underserved, and, you know, the rest is history. Longevity. The longevity, you know, we've already talked about this post-release nurturing, how important that is. You know, we need to support the game, and we need to have that community engagement. You know, we need to have enthusiastic people creating this content and keeping the game alive. You know, again, I'd say Planet Zoo is an amazing example of that, with everything that you can download in the workshop. Even slightly to the side, if you have a look, people are modding it and putting their own animals in it as well. This is how passionate and skilled our players are and how it fuels the continued new experiences.
Intelligent, sophisticated, challenging game, gameplay with layered complexity. So I think this is, really is the DNA of Frontier Developments. You know, this is, you know, every game that I've worked on, I've been at Frontier for 25 years, has this. You know, this is, this is our, this is our style, and we need to work out how this style, you know, really facilitates sales. And the way I look at it is that it's all about this long, longevity. You know, we want these games to be challenging, of course, but we also want to make them in such a way that with this layered complexity, you can get into them, but you never truly master them.
You know, you look at that with Elite Dangerous, even Planet Coaster, you know, people are still, again, unraveling these new experiences, which are actually embedded in the game, as well as the new experiences that players and ourselves are puppeting into it. Our games need to be truthful, accurate representations, which are authentic to the subject matter.
You know, you look at a, you know, even F1, you know, again, a reason why it's resonated so well with those core fans, that small intersection on that Venn diagram between gamers and F1, you know, we did get those 850,000 players because it does have the pit radio, it does have correct telemetry in there, the tracks are generated accurately, it's got proper renditions of the drivers, and all the rules and everything, and regulations are in there. Jurassic, you know, it was a no-expense-spared game. You know, we had to get Jeff Goldblum in there. We had to make sure that those dinosaurs are better or the same as Industrial Light & Magic, and we do it in real time. It's really, it's really important.
It's how you get those core evangelists to stick, stick to that game and really, you know, well, evangelize about it. And then the final one, which, again, you know, I've alluded to on, you know, Realms of Ruin, while I'm very excited by the level editor, is endless possibilities through open-ended creative experiences led and enhanced by the player. It's not all about sandbox, though, and creating levels. You know, Elite Dangerous, the people are creating their expert, their own experiences in this beautiful sandbox galaxy. You know, you have people, I think it was, like, maybe 20,000 people journeying to the center of the galaxy, to Sagittarius A. Why, why does that sound exciting? It took them 20 hours of their life to do it. Multiply that by 10,000. How many eyeball hours is that?
That's keeping people engaged so that they will then buy this, you know, the various, like, sort of, PDLCs that we have for all our games. Then just finally, this is, you know, trying to join everything together. Our most successful games closely map to this criteria. You map on Planet Coaster, Planet Zoo, Jurassic World Evolution, even you map on Elite Dangerous, which you can see how much revenue is generated. Yes, there are some ROI questions later down the line. So I think that, you know, we need to repeat our previous successes, use this as a really stringent part of the selection process.
And really, you know, I could encapsulate all this very easily by saying, "Let's stick to our knitting," but I think it really doesn't do it justice for the thought behind this. So I think this is very crucial to the success of our studio and our business. And, you know, as I say, both those CMS games that we've greenlit, which are in development, I feel hits each one of those five pillars. And then another homework question, you've got your quokka, just maybe find out what the acronym for this is. If we can move on, Alex, to you.
Okay, thanks, Jonny. So we're gonna whiz through the numbers, 'cause I'm sure people have read through already, 'cause we wanna make sure we've got plenty of time for questions. So I'll do the income statement in two different ways. The first one is on an Adjusted EBITDA basis, so this is a sort of cash profit basis. If we unwind all the IAS 38 accounting, all the capitalization, all the amortization, if we take it- take out depreciation and share charges, this is where you get to on a cash profit basis. So we've already talked about revenue. You know, pleased with the outcome then, in the end, having had to re-guide just after Christmas. 64% on gross margin, so good performance there. Pretty happy with that.
You know, I think we'll be around that number, maybe slightly lower this year, because we've got Realms of Ruin, which means we've probably got a big bit more licensed IP revenue this year, versus the preceding year. R&D grew by 11%, so we've got some foundry costs in there, as you see in the statement. We still have some ongoing foundry costs. We're supporting Stranded and The Great War a little bit this year. But overall, you know, a lot of that cost will come off this year. We're still growing head count, so in terms of, you know, guidance on R&D, I'm expecting we'll be probably mid-fifties, so we'll be maybe growing about 10% in FY 2024 over FY 2023. Sales and marketing and G&A were very similar to last year.
If you look at FY 2023 versus FY 2022. You know, given that the two releases we have this year, we've got F1, which we've already released, and Realms of Ruin, that sales and marketing number will be higher, as I think most analysts have, and G&A, I think will tick up a little bit as well. So overall, you know, we're pretty pleased with the way we ended up, you know, meeting the guidance that we provided, earlier in the year. Oops. Then if we look at it on an IFRS basis, then we add in the capitalized cost and the amortization cost, so capitalized cost there. So if you take that gross R&D from the previous slide, add on depreciation, that gives you sort of gross overall R&D. We've capitalized 71% of that versus 74%, so slightly lower.
So one thing to note for guidance for FY 2024 is, given some of the challenges we've had with the F1 franchise, we're expecting to expense the development costs for F1 Manager 2024 during this year, during this financial year, which means I think we'll probably be capitalizing a slightly lower rate for this year, maybe 65%, something like that. On amortization and impairments, you know, very big increase there. Of course, we've got the charges for Foundry, we've got the charges for F1 as well in that amortization and impairments line, so that will come off quite significantly. I expect we'll be maybe around mid-30s for this year for amortization for FY 2024.
Sales and marketing, we already talked about G&A. When you add in the share charges, went up slightly, 4%, but again, pretty, pretty consistent year-on-year. So we end up with a very big, big operating loss as a result of those impairment charges for Foundry and for F1. We've got an income tax credit, as usual. We benefit from Video Games Tax Relief; that's the biggest element within there. I think we had about GBP 4 million of cash inflow, so you know, expect that to continue each year. So that's where we are on an IFRS basis. I'll just run through the cash flow movement.
So as I mentioned earlier, we would have grown cash, if you discount the acquisition of Complex and the share charges for buying shares into EBT. So if you start with the operating loss and then unwind the IAS 38 accounting, the amortization, capitalization, you can see where we get to on a cash basis. The only other things to flag, really, working capital movement, so cash inflow, we had the Jurassic World Evolution 2 Game Pass deal in receivables at the end of last year, so there's a slight inflow overall on a net working capital basis. We've got the EBT share purchases on there, and then you can see the acquisition of Complex and the tax, which was about GBP 4 million.
So as I mentioned earlier, we're sitting at the end of August at about GBP 25 million of cash, so, you know, plenty of cash to support the business for the future. Then maybe just moving on to current trading and outlook then. So, I'm sure you've all read the outlook statement. So we remain comfortable with the market expectations. So consensus revenue is under 8 million GBP. Consensus Adjusted EBITDA loss is about 9 million GBP, so that's on a cash loss sort of basis. So we acknowledge that, you know, there is likely to be a shortfall from F1 Manager, but we expect that to be offset by, you know, continued good performance across the portfolio. We have also said in the statement, as you would have seen, that we've got confirmed, but yet, as yet unannounced additional revenue streams.
Now, one of those is for F1 Manager 2023, so although the sales might have fallen below, there will be other revenue streams to support that game over the next few months. The other as yet unannounced additional revenue streams for this year, it's not a great big game that we haven't told you about. You know, think of this as subscription deals and/or platform opportunities. So that's why we remain very happy with the consensus numbers that are out there. Of course, our big release to come is coming up in November, Realms of Ruin, so very excited about that. So Jonny, I'll pass to you to do a wrap up.
Yeah, yeah. So again, this is just really, you know, going through exactly what the headlines were at the beginning. Our back catalog continues to deliver nicely. Again, you know, looking at that, it just gives us confidence that we know what good is, we know what... You know, we know that games in the past have generated amazing revenue. We wanna go back, back, back, back to that. Sales of our F1 Manager games are below expectations, but we haven't given up. We have plans, and Alex has just mentioned some other revenue opportunities there. We're really excited about our RTS game, Warhammer: Realms of Ruin. Again, you know, as we ramp up this go-to-market plan, hopefully everyone's gonna start getting even more excited about it.
And, you know, Alex said we do remain comfortable with market expectations for the financial year 2024. And then just going on a little bit more on this, this strategy, is that, you know, we closed Foundry in June. It was absolutely the correct decision. They are great games, but just being a great game doesn't guarantee sales, so that unfortunately had to go. We have two creative management simulation games in development. You know, I think what I like about this is it's moving to historically proven genres, so I think it's a very, very sensible move. And we want to drive ROI. You know, again, we keep coming back to this, so we're reviewing, as I said before, resources, processes, and leadership so that we can get more out of our 900 people.
And then the final thing is, with this refocus and reset, we are confident in returning to attractive levels of financial performance over the medium term. I think that's the last slide we have, Alex.
Yep. So I think what I'll do is, I'll stop sharing now. We'll move to questions. So if you have a question, just pop your hand up, and we'll try and do them in order. Ross first.
Morning, everyone. Yeah, so first of all, Jonny, I can't speak for the quokka, but I think your acronym was Elite, so-
Yeah, that's one.
So that's-
Now you need to tell me what a quokka is.
Yeah, I'll hopefully someone else with a later question can talk to a quokka. So three from me. Probably take them one by one. So great to see the CMS announcement for FY 2026. Are you able to share your thinking on genres that you'll most likely focus on post FY 2026? I assume those conversations are already underway. And the second part to that question, could you give us an idea of who and how big the team is that is now part of that refocused greenlighting process?
So I'll talk about genres. So again, you know, we still want to have a balanced portfolio. I do think our cornerstone is going to be our CMS games because we have the most amount of data, the most amount of skills, the most understanding of our audience, and so that's why we have two. You know, the hope is that when Realms of Ruin is a success, that forms another pillar, and so one of those things in the future, which is not yet greenlit, may be another RTS. Again, if you look at the whole RTS genre, there are so many subgenres, so many bits of subject matter, IP, own IP. I think it's a really rich ground that if we can nail Realms of Ruin, that would be a direction that we would go in.
What was question two again? Sorry, I didn't,
Just could you give us some color on who's part of the greenlighting team, how big it is, sort of how you think about that?
So the greenlighting team... Yeah, it's a very good question. It's basically the whole of our SMT, but there's a cascade through it. So, you know, when we did the... Just about to say the name of the game then. Goodness me! When we did the CMS game, which is due for financial year 2025, there was about 35 people in that process. What I would say as well is it's not just internal. We are collaborating this with external agencies as well.
Right.
It's I can't emphasize how important it is to get that selection right, so it's something which has been a big sea change in this reset and refocus.
Number two, has the performance of the F1 title had any impact on your conversations with IP holders regarding your ability to win future IP licenses?
It has.
Um-
Well, I will. I'll just do it from my side because, again, I probably see some of these IP holders more on the development side, and maybe Alex does it on the commercial side. On the development side, people are very pleased with what we're delivering. We're delivering really authentic games. Obviously, you know, they may want sales, but again, at Gamescom, I would say I was inundated by IP holders wanting us to do games with them. I think our stock is still exceedingly high. I just wanna generate more... I'm saying, Alex, man, I wanna generate more revenue from them. Alex?
Yeah, I think, you know, we've had a lot of very favorable comments from, IP owners, well, including F1 themselves, about the broadcast quality of that game experience. You know, if you watch it on real time, you feel like you're watching a Grand Prix, but you're the one making the decisions. It's a very high-quality game. I think, you know, as Jonny mentioned, that the real challenge is I think we got the audience wrong. You know, we were too optimistic to think we could do 1 million and 1.5 million, maybe even 2 million people.
To get close to 1 million people last year, I think was actually a very good outcome, and so what we need to do is pivot and try and work out how to make the best of this, and I think that there's plenty of money to be made here, but we need to do—we need to essentially get more with less. You know, we're reducing the overall budget, but we need to maybe focus on some key features and try and win all those people back from last year. And, you know, as Jonny said, we haven't given up on this year's game. But looking ahead, you know, a couple of key features I think will win those people back and to get it broader.
You know, one other thing we haven't mentioned, of course, is the challenges with, with Max, making the, the sport a little bit less interesting by, by winning every race. So I think that, that's a challenge for F1, right? But, you know, we're still very proud of that game, and the team have done a super job. I think the, the other thing, just on the F1 performance, I think if you look at Steam Spy, SteamDB data. It's easy to think that, you know, the game has, has really caught a massive cold and, and has massively underperformed. I think those sites, you know, quite useful on concurrency. The, the way they try and extrapolate and work out owners and players is, is less reliable, particularly when there are multiple SKUs, and we've got a base game and Deluxe.
So it's not as bad as people think, if you look at those sites, and, of course, there's console data on top of that. As Jonny mentioned, pre-orders were weak, but then last year we had a pre-order discount, so pre-orders were that much stronger. Post-release, it's been pretty good. People are engaging with the Race Replay mode. So, you know, we hinted at those revenue events for F1 Manager 2023, and I think everyone can guess what they are. I think we will be overall lower than last year in terms of total revenue. I think there's a chance we might get close, but, you know, last year we did GBP 21 million. If we can get sort of mid-teens or low teens, I think, you know, that'd be a pretty good, decent outcome overall.
The challenge really with the auditors is looking ahead at the 2024 and 2025 season. They have to go purely on sort of normal sales basis, and that's where it puts a lot of pressure on the asset. We just made the decision that if we're gonna have to do a small impairment, we're better off doing a big one and just getting out from under that. That's what we've done. Sorry, it's a very long answer.
No, no, no. Sorry, I'm just-
You didn't really ask that question.
No, 'course I'm hogging the mic. So just number three, and one for you, Alex. The change to the amortization profile, could you run us through the rationale for that? And is there any indication that this is... we could expect faster decay rates in future, and that, that's why you're trying to match costs? Any sort of structural change to how you're thinking about things?
Yeah, I think going back to, to when the company was first listed with, with Elite Dangerous, you know, David and the team always knew that that was gonna be a very, long-lasting game, which generated revenue over a long time, and that's been proved with, with the revenue curve. So, so going for a kind of straight line amortization curve, you know, seemed pretty reasonable. As we got more data and we saw with Planet Coaster, the size of the launch revenues were a bit more substantial, and, you know, whereas Elite, of course, had been through sort of Kickstarter funding, and so, you know, been a slow burn. We then saw with Jurassic World Evolution 1, you know, that great big launch, followed by a good sustain, but clearly, the revenue was weighted towards the start.
Each time we're getting a bit of learnings. We knew at some point we wanted to try and transition to accelerate the amortization, essentially write off more of the asset during the first year, and we feel this is a good time to do it. The biggest thing it affects, of course, is Realms of Ruin. That development asset will be about GBP 20 million. So it's, you know, it's our biggest, I think it's our biggest ever project, right? It's a very significant investment. Given we've had two years of impairments, what we don't wanna do is have any risk of an impairment when we look at the end of May 2024. On a straight line method, you'd still have a lot of that GBP 20 million sort of hanging around on the balance sheet.
So, you know, I think we'll look to broadly write down about half of that during the year. So instead of writing off, you know, GBP 3 million, let's say, we'll probably amortize about GBP 10 million. So that's where there's that statement in the commentary there about the amortization profile change. Doesn't have any impact at all on cash profit or cash or any of those things. But, yeah, that's why we've decided to take that opportunity just to tweak the amortization. Now, with the F1 impairment, of course, we benefit a bit there 'cause we've impaired it into last year.
There's a, you know, a smaller amortization charge for F1, but overall, I think there will be an increase in the amortization charge in this year versus where previous people had modeled it.
Yeah. Thanks, gents.
Uh, Katie?
Thank you. Just wondering what unit sales for Warhammer you've assumed to reach your revenue guidance this year? And then also on marketing, would you be able to split out the % spend for each project for 2024, please?
Sure. First one, on expectations. So if we start with the revenue expectations, I think some people have about 20, some people have about GBP 30 million, that sort of range. If you work that through on the price, it's almost certainly, you know, less than 1 million units. Now, if you look back at the experience of the two Jurassic games, you know, we've crossed 1 million units a bit more rapidly. So, you know, we're feeling good about that number. Hopefully, that's a prudent number. As Jonny mentioned on sort of when we look at these proven viable market segments, we're looking for things which have multiple millions of player opportunities.
So I think we would be pretty disappointed if we only got to 1 million people in this financial year. But it's our first RTS, and so we need to be a bit cautious. But as Jonny said, you know, we're feeling good about the game. It's a very big game. We've got the benefit of the Warhammer IP, and you know, we'll be ramping up the campaign from here on in. Your second question was about sort of marketing spend on different things. So we tend to have you know, a fair amount of launch marketing. So when it comes to an F1 game or a Realms of Ruin game, we are generally talking you know, GBP 3-4 million for those launches.
For the sustaining games, there's still money put aside to support those, particularly with PDLC and digital marketing. So I can't give you an exact sort of split of those things, but if you look at last year's number, I think we had GBP 12 million in total. About a third of that, I think, is the team, and then about two thirds is the sort of external spend with different parties and booking those events. And that will break down, you know, fairly strongly towards the launches that happened. But we are... Obviously, last year, we sort of considered Jurassic World Evolution 2 like a, almost like a second launch around the movie, so there was quite a lot of spend for that.
Got it. Thank you.
Uh, William?
... Yeah, hi, guys, thanks for the presentation. Just a couple from me. Just in terms of Warhammer Age of Sigmar, is that currently tracking in line with your expectations in terms of wish lists and follower numbers? And then on the F1 Manager franchise, obviously, you know, better game, better reviews, why do you think it hasn't sold as well as the initial game? Is that just because it's again, sort of a boring season with Max winning everything? And then does, you know, the F1 Manager '23 change how much you're gonna be investing in future titles in that franchise? That would be helpful. And then finally, just thirdly, so elsewhere in the industry, we've seen sort of worse terms for, in terms of, from the platforms and subscription deals. Are you seeing anything like that?
Okay. So I think... Sorry, I was scribbling down your, your questions there. The first one was about, Realms of Ruin performance. So we, we started with, you know, the beta, with lots of people playing, lots of feedback. And of course, with an open beta like that, you know, not all the feedback is, is positive. You know, I love this, I love that. There was some comments on the control mechanism, for example, and the team have done a super job responding and fixing some of those things. So we're feeling good about, about having, you know, gone for the beta, gathered a lot of information, you know, that, that will help the launch. Gamescom was a great opportunity to, to, again, almost have a beta by having lots of people come onto the stand and play.
The open beta that we did in July was multiplayer, whereas at Gamescom, it was campaign mode. So that was an opportunity for people to try out the game in a different way, and anecdotal feedback, very positive there. So, we're feeling good. The wish lists are looking nice, you know, we're happy with that performance. And as Jonny says, you know, we're now sort of starting to ramp up the game campaign. We've got a few key beats that you'll see. I think that there's some evidence to say that people are going a bit later with campaigns, in terms of having a shorter campaign, a more accelerated campaign.
And I think we've maybe gone a little bit long, so we're just measuring a little bit on that, but we've got some really nice key beats coming up. Yeah, I don't wanna say too much, Jonny, because we've, we need to reveal that publicly in the next couple of weeks, don't we? Oh, you're on mute. Sorry.
Sorry. Yeah. We might only go question two, first part of it, really-
Yeah
... some interesting sort of observations there. So, you know, F1 Manager '23 was a better game, it's reviewed really well. And I think it's a fair question to say, you know, why haven't we attracted the same number of people? I think we have probably got the return number, well, we have the number of returners wrong. You know, again, when you're looking at an annualized franchise, and the big question is how many people return, and when do they return? Do they return annually? Do they return biannually? Do they return triannually? You know, one of the areas we wanted to grow was to get more, you know, more of this broad audience in, and I don't think we've done that yet, and we have to analyze the reasons for that.
I think it's too easy to trivialize it all on to trivialize it and just place it all on Max Verstappen being so awesome. My solution is basically just to put a 100-kilogram weight in his car, by the way. That hasn't gone down very well with F1. And, you know, we really are looking around the industry. There's a very interesting blog post by Miles Jacobson, the managing director and creator of Football Manager. I really do suggest people have a look at it, if you haven't already, where he's actually questioning the annual franchise as a thing now, with his own game, the highly successful Football Manager. And they're going to be moving to a subscription service in 2025.
So perhaps the market's changing a bit, perhaps there are these challenges, and we've been caught in it, and we need to understand it. And that's why, you know, we've deliberately said, you know, sorry, we've made sure that what we're gonna be doing for Formula One in financial year, sorry, for next financial year, is a little bit open because we want to know what shape it's going to be. Again, there's nothing really to announce here, it's just a lot of measuring because we are surprised that our attach rate is low. But as I say, we haven't given up. We want to find the best way to maximize it. But I just want to make the point that I don't want to just put it onto the season.
Although, you know, if the season was more positive, even better. Alex, I don't know if you wanna add more to that, just trying to be quite frank on that one.
Yeah, I think the other challenge, in a way, is that people are still playing last year's game. And if they're putting a lot of hours into F1 Manager 2022, they don't necessarily feel that there's enough incentive for them to stop with their career there and join the new one. So, you know, we need to make sure that there is an incentive, and of course, price is an element there. I think price promotions during this year will be good. I think Vegas could help, you know, maybe when people see that track and wanna race that circuit, I think that will help as well. So I think we'll still, we're still gonna have a good go at getting to as big a part of that audience as we can during this year, won't we?
We've just done our first price discounts, and we, you know, don't wanna rush too quickly to discount too heavily. So I think that would be a mistake, so I think we're being pretty cautious there.
Yeah, I think that's a really, a really good point. We've got to make sure that we don't condition people to this amazingly deep price, price cuts on launch. I think that will be a problem for the franchise as we move forward. So it is a lot of holding on there, waiting for this new content to go in, waiting for the buzz of Las Vegas, and doing this, as I said before, and that inertia, just cascade the pricing to then sort of release all these different cohorts with people who have different price thresholds.
... Yeah, I think that the last—oh, no, what, what, the second question?
You got the subscription one, if-
Well, I think it was about the investment in F1. Maybe you've already answered that. You know, we're gonna look at how we can do more with less. The last one was subscription deals, so, you know, we've hinted fairly heavily, I think, about F1 regarding subscription deals there. I think generally the platforms, so Microsoft and Sony, want to plan ahead, you know, a longer period of time, so they're looking and talking to people about their roadmaps and their portfolio. And, you know, of course, they're having discussions with us about that, and I think they're very excited about the portfolio we have looking ahead. But there is always the chance of opportunistic things.
So, for example, if someone had a game scheduled for Game Pass for a particular month, and for whatever reason it pushed out, they would then go and talk to, you know, their sort of key partners, and that's where opportunities can arise, and, you know, frankly, that's helped us a bit with F1. So I don't think necessarily there's sort of less money on the table. I think it just depends how you're engaging and how high you are up the rank with conversations with them.
Yeah. I just want to reiterate that. I think you do need to work harder to get these deals. You know, you need... There's constant engagement, continually selling what your game is, really selling how your game's going to fit in their profile for acquiring users as well, which I think really helps with Frontier's games, trying to bring new games to console. And we have to be ready for these opportunistic moments, and so it's this constant engagement, it's this B2B management, which I think is really important. Sorry, I just said what you said again, but that's-
No, that's fine.
Just wanted to re-illustrate that point.
Uh, Thomas?
Oh. Hi, hopefully you can, you can hear me.
Yeah, we can. Yeah.
Tentatively making my way onto Teams after all this time. Thanks very much for the presentation. Really appreciate it. First question, just... I mean, I know it's difficult to answer. I'm just interested in whether you think, you know, in principle, an RTS game will have a different curve to a CMS game in terms of that, profile that you've outlined from, you know, the sort of legacy titles. I mean, would we expect a sort of, sort of steeper curve at the beginning and a flatter profile over time, or is it, you know, broadly the same profile that we should be looking for? That was the first question. And then the second question, you've talked a lot about, sort of creativity, which is interesting to me.
We've done a lot of work on the creator economy, and I'm interested in whether there is a revenue share with the players. Is this something that can make players money, as well as obviously drive enhanced engagement and improve the gaming experience?
So on the first one, you know, Jonny mentioned earlier, you know, we consider this a, a very big RTS, a very broad RTS. There aren't many RTSs which have so many game modes and have all the creativity. So if you look at our revenue curves and sort of analyze, well, why do they, why do they do so well, particularly for Jurassic and Planet, it's because people are engaging in their own, in their own ways, in, in, often in very creative ways. And so having those tools, I think, is extremely useful. If it was an RTS with, for example, no multiplayer and no, Conquest Mode and no creativity, and it was just a campaign, you know, it'd be a fairly short, short curve.
I think, yeah, it'd be a strong launch, and then it would just be people picking it up in price discounts. But the fact that we have a lot of elements that we've learned from, I think, Jurassic and Planet, I think should mean that we have a very long curve. Jonny, do you wanna comment on that?
On, yeah. I want to like sort of try and disrupt what people think RTSs are by, at launch, having this level editor. So the, you know, again, the hope would be that the curves are more similar to our CMS games. But I do think that people will initially buy that game on that, that campaign mode, which may skew the graph to exactly what you're saying, which is a, you know, a different start to the curve.
All I've, you know, what we've tried to do is follow that, those principles of Elite, this new thing, which we've just presented, to really maximize the area under the curve. Really is almost more important than the shape, is that I just want it to be have that longevity that we've seen with our most successful titles. That's the number one thing, and that's why we've put in those other features to facilitate that, which sort of leads on to your next question in a way, which is about why I think creativity is really important. And you've just raised another dimension to it, which is fascinating.
So first of all, I believe the first thing, creativity, is I want people to keep playing our games, and for players to create new experiences. I think that actually generates revenue in the end. Your suggestion of a more direct way, the Roblox way, from a games evangelist and enthusiast, having people invest time making stuff for your game and getting some revenue from it, sounds really, really appealing. We're not there yet at Frontier. This is probably more in the investigation mode. I'd love to see if you've published any things on that, because I would really, really want to read it. For me, the dream is rather than someone doing the paper round, they start off making content, and eventually they can make a living out of it.
That would be the dream, you know. That's almost how I started, so I think it's a really powerful way of moving forward in the industry. I need to understand it more before we actually, you know, start going seriously on it.
Yeah, we do have lots of influencers, of course, who, you know, make their money out of it, and there's a few key ones on the Planet games, very creative people. But-
Yeah, absolutely. Our master creators do make a good living on it, and that's like, you know. It's not even on the fringes. You know, we really need to accept that new media, social media, and influencers, there's a viable business there. But I think, you know, what Thomas is suggesting is even more sort of visceral and managed, and, you know, I've seen it work on Roblox so well. It's basically it's become a platform, which I think is just an amazing achievement for that game. So I probably haven't answered that question. It's just that-
No-
acknowledging that it's a fascinating subject.
That's fine, and I'll send through our report.
That'd be very much appreciated. Thank you.
James, is that next?
Yes, sir. Good morning. Thanks for taking questions. You have three from me, please. Just on PDLC, in the period, obviously, that's been a very good driver of revenue growth in the past. It'd be good to understand more around how that's still trending within, say, Planet Zoo and the Jurassic Worlds in terms of revenue and gamer engagement from that perspective, and whether the upcoming games will, you know, obviously, you've talked about that there, but, you know, are they, are they sort of could they be a similar split over time from that perspective?
Secondly, you mentioned bots earlier, but it'd be good to hear your thoughts on Gen AI and whether you're using it now, what you could do, and whether, you know, it could be helped, you know, could be used to help users generate content more easily and more of your games going forward. And then finally, I mean, these are rumors, but there's leaked sort of specs potentially around Switch 2 over the past couple of days. But I'm gonna ask you about the specifics of that, but just you have had limited releases on Switches in the past because of their limited specs previously for the Switch 1.
But what would Switch 2 need to be for you in order for you to release more of your back catalog games or upcoming releases, even if still on a limited, scaled-down version? Thanks.
Okay. Well, shall I start with the PDLC one, Jonny, and then you can do the tricky ones? So, PDLC-
Yeah
... last year was almost a third of revenue in total across the portfolio. Planet Zoo and Jurassic World Evolution 2 being the biggest. For Planet Zoo, it was about 40% of all of revenue. I've got the stats to hand for Jurassic World Evolution 2, but I suspect it was even more for Jurassic World Evolution 2, 'cause we had the movie launch in June, and we had a film-themed PDLC then, and we had another one at Christmas. So, you know, there's a lot of months in the year where PDLC will be more than half or around half on some of those titles. So, you know, looking ahead, F1 Manager doesn't have PDLC yet. I mean, there's potential, but it doesn't have PDLC.
You know, it's pretty clear that Realms of Ruin will have PDLC, so I, I do expect the PDLC % will increase over time, 'cause generally, as the portfolio ages, you know, there's a move to more, to more, to more PDLC. So it's a, it's a very important part of our model, and that's what really keeps those revenue curves going. Jonny, I'll pass over to you to, to ask the- answer the AI question.
How much time do I have?
Well, we're over time already.
Okay. No, I'll keep it very quick. It's so first of all, the reason why I say how much time is I'm absolutely fascinated and excited by AI, you know. Working with David for over 25 years, the games industry, you know, sort of 7 or 8 years before that, I'm a technologist. I love software, and I like software to create amazing experiences for players. The way I approach GenAI is basically I look at it in three phases. So the first phase, what are we doing now? How is it helping our games? So a few things that even if you look in Jurassic World Evolution 2, the scientists, they're all generated by an aptly named AI program called Generated Faces.
So again, that saved a lot of time with, like, going around, taking proper photographs and getting all licenses, so it saved us quite a bit of time and money. We use it for concept art, so we use things like Midjourney and Stability AI to really rapidly iterate concept and mood boards and things like that. Again, that's saving a lot of time. We use it for testing. And also, we've actually used ChatGPT for doing outsource briefs. So if you think about Formula One, where we had 100 people, Keywords Studios, last year, generating these amazing tracks, we used ChatGPT to actually try and keep the rapidity of those briefs up as well. So again, it's all making, you know, our lives easier. That's exactly what software is.
Then I look at the second phase, which is imminent, and so, you know, we're gonna be looking at localization. I think that's a very, you know, sensible thing to look at. I know Keywords are looking at Kantan, and we're talking to them. We want to do deeper testing. We even wanna take it a step forward and look at model optimization, which is another cost in developing the game, so that's optimizing those models so that they are smaller in the distance. You wouldn't believe how much of a time sink and cost that is. And then I get to the really exciting part, which is the future. And you know, I see is how are we going to use generative AI to populate our worlds with meaningful content? How are we gonna have branching narratives, you know, where the NPCs...
I don't know if you've ever seen, is it Free Guy?
Free Guy.
What's that?
Free Guy.
Free Guy.
Free Guy.
Oh, my goodness, I can't believe it. It's my wife's favorite film. I've messed up. Anyway-
Yeah
... Free Guy. Awesome. See these branching narratives, which I think are really important because we're always about trying to make these believable worlds, worlds. And just one final thought on that, I know I'm not going into detail, is one of the best things about working at Frontier is although we might not have been using this generative AI and using all these network, you know, neural networks, you look at Elite Dangerous, it's 400 billion systems, all generated using the nebular hypothesis and matching that to the, you know, the mass of the galaxy and generating these very, very believable worlds. You know, David even says that it's actually predicted some planets which have been later discovered. That may not necessarily be AI.
It's procedurally generated, but what it is doing is using software to do the task that 1 million developers or 1,000 developers, I've gone too far there, but many developers would do, and that's exactly what we need to do in the games industry. You know, you've got to run to stand still. The question then just follows on, is it going to save us money? I need to prepare Alex for this response here, is that I'll spend it... I'll spend whatever we save making our games even better because I think that's, you know, when you compare what games were like in the 1980s to the 1990s, to the 2000s to where we are now, our players are very demanding, and we need to be better than the rest.
And so it's such a fascinating subject, and, you know, we want to embrace it, not get carried away with it. Use the term cautiously optimistic, not to deride it at all, but just to say we're gonna use it properly. I think that's about as short as I can talk about AI.
The Switch 2 was the last question, I think, James.
Yeah. Yeah, I'll keep that really quick. You know, I don't really want to talk too much about speculation or what you read. Suffice to say is, the more platforms there are that our games run on, means the addressable audience is bigger, and we'll look at things on a case by case. I'm actually a very big fan of Switch. I think this mobile, this fusion between mobile gaming and then plugging it in works really well for certain games, and I'd love to be able to bring more content to it. I'm not gonna answer too much more than that, if that's okay, James.
No, that's great. Thank you. That's perfect.
Thank you.
Sebastian? Oh, is he there, or has he fallen asleep?
Well, look, my AI was riveting. Stop it.
Can you guys... I think he's been replaced by an AI bot.
Can you guys-
You there, Sebastian?
You're quiet. You're quiet, Seb.
Alex, can you hear me? I mean, like, if I shout like this, can you hear me?
Yep, yep, we can hear you.
Yeah, perfect. Okay, I'll speak like this. Hi, Jonny. Hi, Alex. Thank you for the presentation. Do you think it is worth pricing F1 Manager per engagement via monthly subscription instead of a yearly release, and is that easy or viable to do, please? There are people on Steam that are playing F1 Manager for 40 hours, they don't recommend the game in their reviews, and then continue to play the game for 60 more hours. So instead of charging $50 one time, do you think it might be worth charging $5 per month, for example, and then update the game continuously, as this should capture previous years' players as well? Cheers.
Yeah, did you get that, Jonny?
Yeah. Do you want me to have a go at it?
Yeah.
So the first thing is, some interesting statements there is that, and I can corroborate that. So when I look at the play times, people are playing the game for a long, long time. And so our challenge is: How do we monetize these, these eyeball hours? I think it's a challenge within the whole industry, and I think it's a really big topic. And all I can say is that we're really reviewing what shape Formula One is going to look like in 2024. Nothing to announce at the moment, but the question you raise is something that we're cogitating on. The little point where people, you know, play for 20, 20 hours, review it negatively, and play it for 20 or 30 hours, I think that's just players.
You know, I'm just glad they're playing it for 50 hours net. I just, as I say, want to make the best way of trying to monetize that. Apologies for the vagueness of it, is that we're just still investigating what monetization model is best for a game that when people play it, they stick to it. And so that's the conundrum that we're trying to solve.