Turbine Lands $30 Million in Venture Capital

Posted by Zonk on Saturday May 7, 2005 @04:22AM from the more-virtual-land-ready-to-be-plowed dept.

Gamasutra has word that MMOG maker Turbine, developer of AC, AC2, DDO, and MEO, has succeeded in raising another round of venture capital for current and future projects. From the article: "The company has recently been strengthening its publishing and rights hold on its internally-developed products. It assumed complete control of development and publishing on Middle Earth Online, after finalizing a deal with Tolkien Enterprises and VU Games, and also took full control of Asheron's Call from Microsoft following the company's first round of financing. Of Turbine's major new MMO worlds, Dungeons & Dragons Online is due to launch later in 2005, and The Lord Of The Rings: Middle Earth Online will launch some time in 2006."

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Turbine's Poor Track Record by dmaduram · 2005-05-07 05:25 · Score: 3, Insightful

I'm not so sure how Turbine managed to get so much funding, given how Ascheron's Call 2 has a pretty dismal showing in the MMORPG market -- if you take a look at the the lastest MMORPG charts, you can see that although Ascheron's Call 1 peaked at 120,000 subscribers, Ascheron's Call 2 only peaked at ~50,000 subscribers, and dropped precipitously after May 2003.

Just as my two cents, I'd prefer to see funding go to the makers of Anarchy Online, Planetside, or Eve Online, which are also indie, but have a much better subscriber base & track record.