Anyone else concerned about MSG’s future?

J

jamesleegte

Registered
This video is concerning about the future of Motor Sport Games and more importantly RF2.
I appreciate S397 probably can’t say anything publicly about this video, but can anyone offer anything up or further on this story?
 
lordpantsington said:
Youtuber drama.
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They are a listed company we have access to everything, because they must publish it
Have a look at the losses they are making, plus their share price is worthless and note the section where they state they expect to make further losses for the foreseeable future
Their running costs and accounts don’t make for great reading
They definitely need to trim a lot of fat from their running and advertising costs and if they don’t in their own words in the ending statement, they will have zero liquidity and zero cash to see them to the end of the year.
Have a read for yourselves…….

https://ir.motorsportgames.com/events/event-details/fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2021-earnings-call
 
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IF MSG goes down , S397 can find another publisher, if that is possible.

Also looking at their game list it is easy to see why they are losing
I only see RF2 being decent enough out whopping 9 games.
Nascar fans finally wanted a decent simulator after all those nascar heat arcade series, and when their pre release blogs were more focused on what kind of music is involved with zero word about realism,
Impossible deadlines, releasing game in broken state just to capitalise on hype as soon as possible.
I can't see why it is so hard for these high up corporates (not actual developers).
good game = more money.
 
Love Guitars n Cars said:
Austin is one of the biggest trolls around. Has stalked people online, is permabanned from iRacing for being a troll. He seems smart but definitely has some mental health issues. I would take whatever he says with a grain of salt.
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That’s fair enough, but you can’t ignore motorsport games investor notes and accounts for 2021. They are real, troll free and matter of fact. Link is on reply six of this thread.
 
The accounts and the investor notes don't lie.

They actually state that "The Company expects to continue to incur losses for the foreseeable future as it continues to incur significant expenses to develop new game franchises. Accordingly, the Company does not believe the existing cash on hand will be sufficient to fund its operations for at least the next 12 months."

They also state "The adequacy of its available funds generally depends on many factors, including its ability to successfully develop consumer-preferred new products..."

It would be interesting to see income from NASCAR 21 compared to the cost of development and advertising.
 
I think an important part that's left out in the discussion and comments here is the point of liquidity. Noone of us, including Austin who seems to have a crush on MSG, knows the future financial plans, contracts with potential investors and long term strategies. Keep in mind that MSG is in a very early stage of it's planned release cycles so I would be careful with fast conclusions. IIRC iRacing is a prime example of a company that made losses for several years before it broke even, just to put that into perspective. It might be well possible that MSG learned a lesson from Nascar Ignotion and that the next game could be a much better product. Who knows. There are alot of other developers in the sim racing/racing game market that produced equaly bad and cost sinking products.

On another note: Austin has enough points to clear up what went wrong with PCars 3. I have no idea how people take a guy seriously, who promoted such a flop of a game for his employeer, just to go on a killing spree against other developers and publishers to "spread the word". I have no issue with people giving negative criticism about my favorite sim or anything, but his video about the crashing AI at Daytona with the perfectly fitting title "rF2 is beyond broken" simply shows that he has no idea what he is talking about. And the sad part about it is that very few people understand the clickbait, hit a like button and never consider that there are real individuals at the recieving end of this agenda. And people like Austin have one, that's for sure.
 
trichens said:
The accounts and the investor notes don't lie.

They actually state that "The Company expects to continue to incur losses for the foreseeable future as it continues to incur significant expenses to develop new game franchises. Accordingly, the Company does not believe the existing cash on hand will be sufficient to fund its operations for at least the next 12 months."

They also state "The adequacy of its available funds generally depends on many factors, including its ability to successfully develop consumer-preferred new products..."

It would be interesting to see income from NASCAR 21 compared to the cost of development and advertising.
Click to expand...

This is the concerning part for me.
They are heavily implying they don’t expect to be able to release a strong product this year to create their own revenue and that they will run out of cash before year end. In the accounts their general and administrative costs are far greater than their current liquid cash. This will run dry by quarter three unless they can generate revenue from existing products.
They are going to be hugely reliant on fresh investors throwing money at them, but with their stock price in the toilet that’s going to be hard work all round and will have to offer options in the company to sweeten the deal. They are realistically trying to arrange capital raising debt to see them through.
If they make it through the year, they then need to release a highly polished and successful game to bring in revenue.
They also need to move out of their swanky offices and work from home by the looks of their accounts too.
Champagne lifestyles on a lemonade income springs to mind here.
I truly do hope they turn it around, they can’t afford another flop that’s for sure.
1C7564B4-D641-4B14-8B21-7DE4A5AC981B.png
 
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It also seems a little strange that on 31/12/2021 they claim to have $17.8 million but three months later they have $12 million.
in simple terms they have "burned" through around $2 million per month. Or in other words they have enough "cash" to last around six months.

They also make great claims about the titles they own.
The Heat series and NASCAR 21 are really just one title.
So we have NASCAR, rF2 and KartKraft available now.
For 2023 they claim to have an IndyCar release and at some point in the future a BTCC title.
I don't see where they expect to make $2 million monthly from any of this.
 
Another problem with MSG strategy is that they are wasting resources on making leman ,BTCC and indycar STANDALONE title.
all of these categories can be already simulate good enough with current rf2 physics.
But no instead they would much rather make a standalone game on different engine , so devs first have to learn new engine THEN go on to develop actual game.
Especially how well RF2 conducted virtual leman, a leman game is super redundant, wasteful.
They should just dump the remaining money on rf2 making it the official license game for all 3 those things....this way s397 already knows how to work on this engine speed up the process, free the resources to actually add something new physics wise, gameplay wise to better simulate above 3 categories.

Rf2 is actually king of their offerings and this is not even a subjective opinion.
 
they waste so much money, with 1 million, with rF2 plateform, I will licence some rally cars, and I will pay hillclimbs makers, and it will be a massive success, Rally DLC + Hillclimb tracks DLC.
I have many more ideas, they just waste money with massive fails like Nascar game....The next games will follow the same fail. They are awfull about releasing something new and good, they just need to hire talented people, fix the rF2 issue, like AI and shadows, but no.
They can just focus on the GT4 full series, with 10 more tracks, but no, they focus on the Nascar fail....and about the Formula E, which is for me a fail.

If you are a hillcimb track maker and a rally/hillclimb car maker, I can pay for a serious project (5000$), I can have a lot of sponsors, ask me in private.
 
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Just fix rF2 issues like A.I, shadows etc and then use the exact rF2 engine/tyre model for new releases. There is no need to dumb down rF2 physics, that's what driving aids are for. Literally make the new games rF2 but with different licenced content, how hard can it be? That approach probably wouldn't work for consoles though. Basically, fix rF2 with the help of community feedback, then keep on realeasing rF2 under a different name and some shiny new marketing year after year. Wasn't that pretty much what happened with rF1?
 
In the middle of last year, the software firm I had worked at for over 21 years was taken over by a new business that was buying up other businesses in the same sector. We were very much the smaller firm but we were promised that the larger business was intending to run each of the acquired firms as a separate business to ensure customers wouldn't be lost or forced to move to a different solution. Nine months later, "my" firm has lost it's dev team to the parent firm, sales team have left, tech support team has gone, half the support team, and senior members of staff from other departments - myself included - have also left.
They now have a product they can't improve, provide expert support for, and pretty much everyone who knows how it works has left.

Ultimately, despite the larger firms "claims" by default they will end up with just one product.

For MSG that needs to be rF2 and their other titles MUST be customised versions of the core rF2 product.
It can already provide NASCAR racing so why bother to create a separate product?
There are mods for BTCC cars and tracks, so there is no NEED for a separate BTCC product?

Of course, the issue for MSG is the revenue stream for these products. With console gamers used to having to pay for a game upgrade every couple of years, and the subscription model of iRacing, MSG need to be be able to get rF2 users into the same mindset.
They must be looking to use iRacing as the example of where they want to take their portfolio of games, and if you present that model to prospective investors it's likely to look a good income stream.
The last figures for iRacing subcribers that I have found were for April 2020 and show 160,000 users - or around $1.6 millon per month.
Then the market for standalone games on consoles I would expect to be far, far in excess of this.
 
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