Codemasters, developers of the upcoming fantasy MMORPG ArchLord, has announced that subscriptions for the game will use a new model they are dubbing 'PlayPLUS':


The press release outlines the different plans which will be available, ranging in price from a modest US$9.99 per month to a staggering US$39.99 per month. It seems that a revenue-raising scheme, invented by smaller developers to allow them to offer games free from subscriptions, has been assimilated by Codemasters into the existing pay-to-play format. Players of free MMORPGs generally don't mind the fact that certain items are locked for paying players, since most of the game is still freely accessible. But only time will tell whether players will be willing to pay for extra content on a monthly basis on top of the initial purchase and their regular subscription fees.

Several more publishers have announced their quarterly earnings results over the last week, with all of them recording quarterly losses. (See here for the company results posted last week.) Here are the details, with prices in US dollars unless otherwise noted.



EA
In its first quarter of FY2007, EA raked in US$413 million (AU$543 million), up from $365 million in the same period last year. The company recorded a loss of $81 million for the quarter, or $0.26 per share, up from $58 million last year.

Top sellers for EA were 2006 FIFA World Cup, Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, Need for Speed Most Wanted, The Sims 2 and Fight Night Round 3.

The company expects to bring in between $635 and $685 million next quarter, and record a loss of between $0.28 and $0.22 per share. In its entire FY2007, EA expects revenues of between $2.8 and $3.0 billion, but still expects to make a loss per share of between $0.30 and break even.


Activision
In the first quarter of Activision's fiscal year 2007, the publisher recorded net revenues of US$188 million (AU$247 million), which is significantly down from $241 million in the same quarter last year. It amounted to a loss of $18 million, or $0.06 per share, which is much better than the expected loss of $0.11 per share.

The sales figures were mainly driven by the Over The Hedge movie tie-in and X-Men: The Official Game, both of which were released on multiple platforms. An additional highlight was the high sales of Call of Duty 2, which is the top selling Xbox360 game to date.

In the next fiscal quarter, Activision expects revenues of $130 million, which would amount to a bigger loss of $0.13 per share. For its entire 2007 fiscal year, the publisher has raised its expected revenues to $1.075 billion, and expects that to climb to $1.6 billion in FY2008.


Midway
Midway's second quarter 2006 results were in line with expectations, with the company bringing in US$25.9 million (AU$34 million), down from last year's Q2 revenues of $36.9 million. The result was a loss of $31 million, slightly more than the $29.9 million loss in the same period last year.

Midway was especially pleased with the performance of the PC strategy title Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War, which was a chart topper in the UK for the three weeks following its release.

In the next quarter, Midway expects to bring in $24 million and record a loss of $23 million. For the whole 2006 year, the company expects revenues of $155 million, which would result in a net loss of $70 million.


Sony
While Sony as a whole posted a profit of 32.3 billion yen (AU$369 million) in the first quarter of fiscal 2007, its game division recorded a loss of 26.8 billion yen (AU$306 million). It posted revenues of 122.5 billion yen (AU$1.4 billion), down 29.1% compared to the same quarter last year. Hardware and software sales for its Playstation 2 console were down leading up to the PS3's launch this November, and the company shipped fewer Playstation Portable handheld systems this quarter. However, PSP software shipments more than doubled to 9.1 million units worldwide, which compares to 33 million shipped units of PS2 software.

Worth Playing reports that the spiritual successor to the John Woo actioner Hard Boiled has been delayed and will not make its debut this year. The highly anticipated game was playable at this year's E3 and won in the Best PC Action Game category in IGN's Best of E3 2006 awards.

Stranglehold casts gamers into Chow Yun-Fat's signature role as Inspector Tequila, pitting them against Hong Kong crime lords in a no holds barred action adventure.


Stranglehold is now slated for release in Q1 2007.

Fans make Irrational speak up

SShock2 recently held a Q&A with Irrational Games regarding the progress of BioShock, the "spiritual successor" to the System Shock games.

BioShock is still being kept under wraps, so the content of the Q&A doesn't delve into too much detail about the game itself. Instead, it focuses on the design challenges the team faced.


With BioShock approaching its second year of development, it's only a matter of time before we start to hear more from Irrational about its submerged scare-fest.

Chapter 2 of Star Wars Galaxies is now online, offering a broad range of new content in a game frequently criticised for its lack thereof.


The full list of changes is too long to go into here, but is available at the official SWG site.