According to several gaming sites, youtube sources etc. the 43% loss of revenue in 2023 and the decreasing stock value from 50€ to 16€ of the Focus group now has some consequences. There'll be a rebranding of the group from Focus to PulluP beginning April 1st (yes, no joke). Within that there's a bit of restructuring going on, DTG seems to be put in a special 'department' alongside other development studios, but we shall see what the future brings to us. Anyway not an entirely clever move to buy a company if you're going to run out of money soon... or to 'rebrand' yourself because the existing name is burned... but hey, what do we know. Feeling a bit with the Dovetail staff members, since it's your income for your life I hope there will be no further consequences and you don't have to suffer from bad management decisions. Sources: https://www.gameswirtschaft.de/wirtschaft/focus-entertainment-umbenennung-pullup-entertainment/ (German) https://www.pushsquare.com/news/202...randing-to-pullup-entertainment-in-april-2024 (English) Was thinking to put it in Off Topic first but since I have a feeling this might have an impact on TSW as well someday I went to General Discussion.
I think the new name is just bullshot. PulluP? who is gonna pull up? Focus sounds way better, still. who cares if their company name has some bad reputation about finances or whatever? if they catch the curve they'll be just fine again (or I just don't know anything about marketing stuff ).
they are FAR from going to loose money anytime soon. https://cdn.focus-home.com/admin/in...20240118_focus_entertainment_q3_202324_en.pdf
ROFL Nothing is so bad that it can´t get worse. And to think of the high hopes we had not one year ago... Quite clevaaaaa! Change your name and leave the skeletons in the locker behind. I´ll try to pull that PR stunt with my bank.
I think the choice of name could be related to the word being a palindrome. The fact they write P in uppercase at both ends is a strong indication. Awaiting confirmation through a clever logo.
Something tells me that this focus buyout wasn't a good thing even though I thought at the time it would be
That was my immediate thought!!! Just a terrible name lol. What will it mean for DTG and TSW? Only time will tell, but the first few months under FocusuP haven't been very exciting or given much hope.
I remember saying on that thread something along the lines that it would go badly for DTG... I was right.
Jokes aside Focus have burned a lot of cash over the past 3 years. The balance sheet reflects modest debt ratio but they do tend to spend capital. But the spending was expenditure for growth. So even though it has held the stock price down, what they’re spending on is for future gains. Maybe 2024 is that year. They bit the bullet and refrained for focusing on big 2023 releases. They do have some big releases for 2024 plus a pretty big restructuring that will ideally improve publish games across a wide range of genres and developer classes. Other than the new name being pretty bad this is probably good news
You are far too sensible to be on here. Who would have thought buying a business would have the knock on effect of reducing profit........
Seeing as it seems it’s a PR move to change the name, personally I think that’s a bit of a mistake the old the name “Focus” could have been quite good this kind of situation in terms of PR, you know like Focused back on track type thing. but yea hoping theirs no repercussions on staff and franchises. im not fully aware of what caused this sudden change in revenues but seems a bit odd.
I mean it’s industry wide. Focus or PulluP (which spelled backwards is PulluP, lol) is doing well enough to weather the storm. 2023 was a bloodbath across the industry. Mass layoffs (I think 10k gaming devs globally) and Riot just laid off another 450 yesterday. I think the market is oversaturated with devs, studios, publishers, games etc and they can’t all be profitable. A lot of companies grew too fast and need to shake out either employees or close unprofitable studios altogether. More companies are actually just bad. Look how much stuff is out on steam and ps store that they want 30 bucks for, meanwhile it’s basically a mobile port. Those games aren’t turning profit, and there’s soooo many
definitely seen them kind of things, bit of look and this may turn around to be advantage for customers that bad/rushed content don’t sell.
Lol looking at the graph above it looks like focus' stock price has been dropping since they acquired dovetail, but I'm not an expert in reading these things!
"For Dovetail Games, the year will see the launch of several new games and the continued growth of the award-winning Train Sim World and Train Simulator Classic series through the steady delivery of additional content" Here's hoping that means we won't be getting a rushed out Train Sim World 5 this year.
It's says steady delivery of additional content, so here's hoping that it means DLC will be released in an alright state rather than being rushed.
I'm going to pull the rip cord and say it, we will be getting TSW 5 this year, I can almost guarantee it.
Reception doesn’t matter, only the money they make. DTG’s various community pages are full of the same complaints, most trainsim forums you visit will warn you off DTG. Every year their profits go up & they were obviously attractive enough to buy. DTG remind me of CocaCola, notice how everyone says it’s terrible, yet it’s still one of the most popular drinks. Personally I care a lot less about the idea of a ‘new’ release each year, as it usually gives you the best quality routes for the lowest overall cost, the thing that makes me hate them it’s DTG is technically handicapped & makes a hash of it every time.
Reception matters because if something is poorly received, then it doesn't really make money. But now that I've said that, they clearly still don't seem to consider that.
DTG have proven that it doesn’t though, obviously they have & do go too far with the lack of quality sometimes, to such an extent that even their most diehard fans wouldn’t touch - but what they’re doing with TSW isn’t anything new, they have a made a very good corner of the market for themselves, to the point where they’ve practically pushed every other trainsim dev out. DTG are professionals at pushing shovelware out, and getting a lot of money for it. For everything else they’re bad at, that skill is more than made up for in their ability to continue making a profit.
I’m not sure if it’s an advantage for customers. When I speak of “bad”, l’m talking BAD. Like a good portion of the stuff midnight games and aerosoft like to publish. On the Road Truck Simulator, lol. Stuff people aren’t buying anyway lol, so who does it really affect if they go under? It’s kind of like a tree falling in the woods; nobody knows, nobody cares. There will just be less really bad options out there. There will probably be less good options too who just could not market their product. There is skill in marketing a game but there’s a lot of luck too, especially when you’re a small dev with no budget… If anything I think the big devs and publishers will probably be cutting corners where they can and cancelling any overly ambitious projects (TLOU online getting cancelled, RIOT cancelling some projects etc)
personally I see the advantage in a company understanding the hard way that content what is bad bad doesn’t sell as a positive, they are responsible for the staff and having them focus on stuff what will sell will be better all round, if anything it may stop the bad bad as they may just see the lack of point in them with the other points you picked up I think bad marketing and stuff could happen with anything, even a brilliant game could have some questionable marketing as a strange kinda let down and still be a good game. small devs and small budgets should be better working with what they can handle rather than promise the next GTA kinda thing when they know they couldn’t deliver. I suppose it’s not the easiest kinda business in the world but neither is much and reality hitting will be better than terrible products the way customers are concerned.
Honestly, anyone still buying things with ‘Aerosoft’ on them only have themselves to blame. Steam has always had the problem of low quality garb flooding the store, Microsoft wasn’t too far behind. It’s only really in the last couple of years that Sony has seeming relaxed their rules on what makes it to the PSN store. I think people buy the bad the stuff more than we think, quite a lot of it usually circles back to the same handful of publishers/devs.
I hope you're not including Zusi 3 in that... To be fair to Aerosoft, they do have some good releases, not just Zusi 3. World of Subways 2 and 3 are great, as is Omsi 2. I also love their Im Koblitzer Bergland route for TS.
WOS3 was okay but when I tried running it a few months ago and had some issues, Aerosoft Support basically told me it was an obsolete title and to sod off! A shame as it’s probably the closest we are going to get to a decent representation of the pre S stock Circle Line in one of the sims. OMSI2 is also effectively abandonware, other than the dev and publisher still selling it (!), never could get the joypad to work properly, hate driving with KBM and it does have a penchant for crashing at frequent intervals.
It's not that bad actually, just the usual ancient RSC routes everyone has already + JT Metropolitan Line + some freeware VP packs.
Still, neither of them can be considered shovelware. If those problems applied to every game, then GTA 4 and Saints Row 2 would both be shovelware games - quite an insult to what is considered by many to be the best GTA game in the case of the former, and one of the best non-GTA crime games ever created in Saints Row 2's case. And believe me, if you think London Underground Simulator and OMSI 2 are poorly optimised then you will not believe what CD Projekt managed to do to Saints Row 2.
