Earlier this week, Frontier Developments released its financial reports for FY22, which ended on 31st May 2022.
While F1 Manager 2022 likely isn’t a part of those numbers, having been released after the fiscal year closed, the reports indicated that the title is off to a good start.
“The year-on-year reduction reflects greater investment in significant game developments for release in future years, including F1 Manager 2022 which was successfully released in August 2022 (in FY23), and our Warhammer Age of Sigmar real-time strategy game for FY24,” said Alex Bevis, Chief Financial Officer of Frontier Developments.
Things seem to be looking up, in general. Currently, F1 Manager 2022 is trending to be upwards and ahead of where another Frontier property, Jurassic World Evolution 2, is tracking. Not unlike the way Assetto Corsa is for the Digital Bros, we could be seeing the start of another racing game juggernaut in terms of revenue leading for a multi-genre gaming company.
“Our teams have delivered more great content already in FY23, with the Jurassic World Evolution 2: Dominion Biosyn Expansion releasing in June 2022 alongside Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment’s Jurassic World Dominion film, another excellent PDLC pack for Planet Zoo, and a major new game release through the launch of F1 Manager 2022 at the end of August 2022 (all after the end of FY22),” said David Braben, Chief Executive Officer of Frontier Developments.
“I am particularly pleased with initial player engagement with F1 Manager 2022, since this is a major new sports franchise for Frontier, with annual titles scheduled for at least the next three years (2023, 2024 and 2025),” Braben added.
So far since its release on 30th August, F1 Manager 2022 has seen great successes in the UK and Western Europe, but the US is surely a place where the franchise can grow in the future.
“Outsourced work for our F1 Manager 2022 game was particularly significant, driven by the need to deliver a large volume of assets to support the modelling of 22 race circuits and their surrounding environments,” Bevis said.
“We’ll be able to leverage that investment across our future F1 Manager titles.”
This potentially hints at high development costs for the initial release, with reduced research and development investment needed per year as the franchise progresses.
The title saw itself at fourth on the UK sales charts in its first week of existence. From the looks of everything, the payoff looks to be substantial for Frontier Developments immediately as work for the 2023 title is already underway.
The future Frontier roadmap confirms this, stating the “initial sales for F1 Manager 2022, the first title in our annual Formula 1 management game series, has been strong and in line with our expectations, giving us further confidence as we continue to develop F1 Manager 2023 (for release in FY24).”
Overall, the company saw a lot of positive growth YoY with revenue up to £114m, a 26 per cent increase, while net cash had dipped from £42m to £39m.
With that last point above about net cash being down YoY, the company reports that following the first quarter of FY23, that number is now at £53m.
1.7 UPDATE DELAYED
Frontier Community Manager Steve James posted an update about the upcoming update on the F1 Manager 2022 subreddit on Thursday. Following the release of the fiscal reports the day prior, Steve from Frontier updated players on the upcoming 1.7 Update to the title that was originally planned for the middle of September.
“Due to the number of changes that we’re bringing with this patch, the team need a little more time to test everything,” Steve wrote. “With this in mind, the patch will likely be ready to start rolling out next week, across both PC and console versions of the game.”
While it may still land in September, it will be slightly later than the hoped date between 19th September and 23rd September which was given to fans in the Twitter Spaces. We’ll follow up on that when more information is available.
Source: Frontier Developments