Interplay Plans $75 Million Fallout MMO

Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings have again become the only source of information on the current status of ailing U.S. publisher Interplay, with the latest online documents showing the company has plans for a new high budget massively multiplayer online game. Filings in August 2005 showed the company to be in considerable debt, with no new products planned. A new presentation on the SEC website though shows that the company is currently planning the sale of Interplay common stock, to be traded on one of the Euronext exchanges. Proceeds from these sales are then intended to be used for the production of a massively multiplayer online game based on the Fallout role-playing game series. The budget for the game, first announced in 2004 but with no apparent progress in the years since, is put at $75 million, which will apparently be funded by Interplay and unnamed development and distribution partners. The large budget, even by online standards, is split between $5 million for pre-production, $40 million for production and $30 million for launch costs. The game is suggested as going into production in January, with a launch date of July 2010. Proposed formats for the game are not mentioned, but implied to include at least the PC. The game will use a recurring subscription fee, while also allowing players to purchase usage based time cards. A return for prospective investments is predicted to occur within the first three years. The company’s predictions rely on reaching a total of one million subscribers during the first year, becoming profitable in the second year and generating revenues of $160 million per year, with a net income of over $50 million per year from year three.