C.A.R.S. – Financial Details Revealed
Posted on September 25th, 2011 in Project CARS – 36 Comments
In the past few months, Slightly Mad Studios have already revealed plenty of details on their innovative new concept that is launched with their C.A.R.S. title, allowing sim racers to invest in the upcoming title.
The studio has already outlined how investors get to have a say in the direction the title and its content is taking. Furthermore, the investors get to follow a completely transparent development process while enjoying development builds of the title from the get-go.
But these perks won’t be the main reason to invest into C.A.R.S. as Slightly Mad Studios are giving a major part of the revenue generated by the title back to the shareholders as a new article in Gamesindustry.biz outlines:
Slightly Mad will take 30 per cent of profits with the remainder divided up amongst the community based on the amount of shares in a game they own.
Slightly Mad is targeting individuals and fans with shares in the games priced a $5 and $10, $250 options for groups, $1000 for small businesses and large companies and investors can get involved with contributions of $100,000. Longer-term, subscribers can also benefit when PC games are ported to other formats.
Based on a two year development cycle at a cost of $5 million, Slightly Mad estimates that a $10 share will return $35 if the game hits a $25 million profit, or 657,000 traditional retail sales. A $250 share will return $875 and a $100,000 share $350,000.
Slightly Mad is targeting three million sales of C.A.R.S., a 90 per cent Metacritic and a profit of $52 million. The free-to-play game will include microtransactions priced from 10 cents to $10 and the company has already licensed a number of tracks and manufacturers.
In the long run, C.A.R.S. is only the beginning though as Slightly Mad Studios are looking to push their innovative concept way past the confines of the virtual racing genre. Called “World of Mass Development”, the service will be offered to other developers as well who can fund their own titles without being restricted by a big publisher and giving investors insight into a transparent development process while providing a solid financial return for shareholders.
“Traditional development puts developers at the mercy of publishers,” Slightly Mad Studios commented. “Although it supplies the necessary funds to develop games with proper QA testing and development cycles, it also makes the development cycle subject to business matters such as financial quarters, company profits and marketing budgets. The development process offered by WMD shifts the focus back to creating great games that your target audience wants to play, whilst still offering the chance to get proper funding for development and testing.”
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