Company News IPLY stock post FO3 sale fun

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Fallout 3; Interplay

After the wake of the announcement that <A href="http://www.bethsoft.com">Bethesda</A> has picked up the rights to develop and publish <a href="Http://www.interplay.com/fallout">Fallout</A> games for multiple platforms, it appears that <A href="http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=IPLY.OB">IPLY.OB</a> has soared to a recent high of <b>4 cents per share</b>.
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Here's a <A href="http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=IPLY&read=1073">reaction</a> from my person favorite long term investor, <b>frymuchan</b>:
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<blockquote>must be that the shares have already consolidated with just a few people and not many people are in the know that Interplay is still fighting away. There's several longs, like me, who are hanging on to the bitter end, Titus has 70-80 million shares, Herve 9 million, leaving only between 10-20 million shares out there. I still hold around 600,000 shares. and I know several longs on this board also hold a fair amount of shares. So, it could be everyone who still has shares is sitting back and waiting, and there is not quite enough interest from buyers to pay enough for the shares to convince longs like me to sell. Don't know why no shares have traded but this is all I can come up with. I was going to sell some of my other stocks and buy in today, but I thought I'd miss my chance to buy Interplay waiting for the money to come in from the other stocks. Now it seems I could have done that and stil had time to buy on the news of the fallout sale.</blockquote>
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No shares being traded might be because most people who've been following the company know that it's crippled beyond repair. Games take around 18 months to make, and the company owes close to million smackers on back rent alone. That makes it hard to get new offices, which are fairly important to actually making a game. You also have to hire back all those employees to make a game. You have to pay all those fines and suits, and everything else - <b>while you fund and make a game, too</b>. Oh, and given the company's recent track record, it's more likely that game will be cancelled or flop than will go on to making any money.
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[StraitLacedDeviant]

What are the share numbers like since they soldout fallout?

 

[DarkUnderlord]

There's only one answer for it. Frymuchman is an idiot. A certified, guaranteed, 100% idiot.

Even if Bethesda bought FO3 for $15 million, that's presumably nowhere near the type of money Chuck is used to throwing around at his lousy games. He won't know what to do with such a small sum of money. He sure as hell can't develop an MMORPG with it.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I doubt $15M will help them much at all, even if they don't plan on doing the MMORPG. It's going to be hard as hell for them to rent new offices even if they pay the back rent on their old one. Interplay has a horrible credit rating right now, and that's something you need to have when you rent anything these days. Herve tried to find other places that would rent to him cheaper, but that credit rating in addition to not paying rent for six months blocks any efforts in that regard. If he pays the back rent, he might be able to talk his old landlord in to letting them back in, but that's iffy considering. Interplay might have to buy an office somewhere and pay for it up front if they can't work out anything with the office rental types. That's really the first thing Interplay needs, office space, and that's going to cost them around $1M in back rent first just to lease.

Then there's the problem of hiring people if he's going to develop anything. He might be able to get some of his old employees back if they haven't found a job and are willing to go through the likelihood that this will happen again in a few months. Hiring enough people to get Interplay back in development again could be a lengthy process. That's downtime while there are still expenses to pay like interest on loans, penalty fines, and so forth.

He's also going to have to make amends with the state of California before they keep digging on things. That means he'll have to pay all those back taxes, all those fines which have been piling up daily since a month or so ago.

There's also Interplay's debt to consider. If I remember right, they're $15M-20M in debt, and the interest on that debt has to be staggering. They definitely need to devote some of the money they got to paying off on that debt, because they can't afford it getting larger and all that interest building up.

He'll have to pay Atari all those rights fees in order to sell games like BG/IWD/etc. as well as BGDA2 if he wants to sell them again. Of course, BGDA2 is now six months old and better games have come out since then, such as that one based on EverQuest. I'm not sure that they'll get much more out of it at this point, the hype has died and people have already rented and played it then moved on. Of course, even if he does pay those back rights payments, there's nothing saying Atari will agree to continue the agreement which Interplay broke when they stopped paying. They still owe Atari those rights payments, though.

Now that Interplay does have money and everyone knows this, I suspect the legal eagles that have sued the company and won have already started the process on getting what Interplay owes them. Interplay not only owes Atari, but also BioWare and a few other companies they've screwed over in the past.

If the programmers are inexperienced with the old codebases they might dust off and start working on again, Interplay runs the risk of having massive delays while those coders get up to speed with that old code. If they don't go that route, they'll have to start from scratch or license some documented code. None of those situations sounds good for the company.

They'll be running on a tight deadline as well, considering Interplay isn't really making much money on it's older assets and they really don't have much in the way of stuff in the works now. There's no way they'll have anything remotely releasable until Christmas 2005. Even then, what are the odds that game released then will go on to make enough profit to fund the game after that? $5M could easily vanish in the development of a new title with little to no return on it, not counting company overhead.

If all Interplay got was $5M, then they're utterly fucked. Even at the $15M number, it's going to be tight and there's no way in hell they can afford to make an MMORPG given all the problems and money issues they're having right now. Even Caen suggesting MMORPGs at this stage is utterly idiotic and shows he has no comprehension of what he'll need to have just to make one.

 

[StraitLacedDeviant]

I'm sure herve will use that profit to pay off the wages of himself and his brother and the others on the board of directors and the rest will just mysteriously dissapear, there is no reason for him to pay anything when he obviously intends to declare bankruptcy. Once he does declare bankruptcy of interplay he doesn't even have to pay the employees everything he owes them.

 

[HanoverF]

How do people that dumb get enough money to buy stocks in the first place?

 

[Ortchel]

Do you have 4 cents?

Become a stockbroker.

 

[4too]

Portal

Portal

Can Interplay make money by "consolling" FO, FO2, and Planet T ?

What would be lost by the port to TV resolutions and button controllers?

Do the present consoles lack the hardware spec's?

Well, ... I guess they would have done so, long ago.



4too

 

[Ortchel]

Who's Portal?

 

[4too]

Mere Conjecture

Mere Conjecture

In a NMA thread that touched on the video and control issues in developing a dual platform game, including FO3-"B-ethesda"

http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewto ... c&start=60

Roshambo and JE had an exchange that touched on the possible implications of porting.

I am wondering if in all the business news if milking other platforms was ever considerd by Interplay.
I only know of the ports to MAC OS 10, and how the differences in the resolutions
affect the screen.

And the point and click interface of the FO's made getting a two button USB mouse a must.

.......

Oh and for a frivolous tangent, "Portal" was a C-64 game that was engrossing enough to endure the loading of the cranky old floppies as you advanced through the story,
moving from clue to clue.

4too

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

4too, I have to know DO YOU SMOKE CRACK?

 

[Worm]

There's only one answer for it. Frymuchman is an idiot. A certified, guaranteed, 100% idiot.

But he posted on a message board.

 

[4too]

Self Induced

Self Induced

Inquiry by skatskooper:

4too, I have to know DO YOU SMOKE CRACK?

No.

Some of the significant ANTI-role models in my time line have been coke-heads.

Outside of cafiene derivitives,
there is enough 'free' stimulus in the world to justify alternate expression in all cognit individuals.

And if this smoke is noxious to your world view, ""just say no!"".



4too