EG7 on September 20th put out a presentation on how the business is going to Investors, we wanted to cover some of the Highlights in regards to EQ and Daybreak Games.
Monthly Active Users
EverQuest 1 is only the 4th of 7 for the Daybreak Games in terms of MAU. It seems to have risen closer to the 100kish Range from 67kish range that the last numbers we could see were around the time they were bought, during the Covid Pandemic Years, even up to the end Month, May 2023 it still remains in that MAU range.
These are basically double the numbers of EverQuest 2.
Monthly Revenue Trend
Even though EverQuest 1 is 4th for MAU, it is 2nd for Revenue, generally 1.5-2x the EverQuest 2 numbers.
Even though DCUO is so high, this doesn't go into Costs which DCUO with last numbers was quite higher then EverQuest 1 (the License probably doesn't help).
Acquisition
Sony's focus being in the console business and not the PC business, plus in the 7 year period prior to EG7 buying Sony Online Entertainment, SOE lost Sony around 400 million dollars. In the year prior to being purchased SOE was down 32 million, after EG7 bought them and reorganized (that is let go like half of the staff) they rebounded it to up 12 million instead.
We still don't know how much EG7 paid for SOE, but potentially got a deal from the losses. Nothing about why the losses were so huge as well, maybe related to the Sony Hacks in that time period, or EQ3 having to be canceled/rebooted like 3 times or their other handful of failed games.
Revenue/EBITDA
This chart is overall Daybreak Games Revenue/EBITDA performance with the bump being from Magic The Gathering Online in 2022.
Contributions
Of the Developers/Publishers that EG7 owns, Daybreak still ends up contributing the most revenues.
EverQuest 3
EverQuest 3 is not a guarantee, they have not committed to it just yet, but there are some estimates if they do commit, which from the 2025 Development Start, we will probably know either way in 2024.
For game style, there was mention of From Software over 13 years perfecting its formula to make Elden Ring which earned 1 Billion as the peak of the formula.
Suggesting that people are more open to Hardcore experiences, EverQuest 3 would probably be closer to the Original EverQuest back when it was more of a Hardcore Sandbox MMO instead of the Theme Park Modern MMO style.
MiscThey have pulled back from the bigger investment in their current games (no Remasters), basically suggesting the only extra investments will be in the form of cheaper things that keep the games running another 10 years or more, such as 64-Bit, UI Engine or DX11 style of upgrades (or if the game can raise its revenue).
