It was already a recurring theme last year: How do Chris Roberts and Cloud Imperium Games manage to keep interest in Star Citizen high even after more than ten years? After all, development started in 2012 and since then there have been many playable alpha versions of the space flight simulation, but no final dates yet – for example for the single player Squadron 42. However, development still requires a lot of money.
Weak start to the new year
The last annual report, which covers the year 2022, showed that income and expenses are increasing at the same rate – in this case around 30 percent. And the values have been almost the same since 2021. It is important for the development of Star Citizen that revenues continue to increase. Cloud Imperium Games draws its income from sales/pledges, subscriptions and other income – but the focus is clearly on the first-mentioned income stream, which can also be seen publicly. And the rate of increase in 2023 was already manageable: of the record-breaking USD 113 million for 2022, it “only” increased by around three percent to USD 117 million. Will spending for 2023 only increase by 3 percent? We won't know until the end of the year.
It is exciting to look at the situation so far this year. At least January started rather weakly. With a good five million in sales via sales/pledges, this was 30 percent below the admittedly strong month of the previous year. Even January of 2022 couldn't be made. Only January 2021 was weaker recently. February 2024 hasn't necessarily been famous so far, although Cloud Imperium Games already held a freefly event for Star Citizen in mid-February – usually a guarantee of picking up and inspiring new star citizens. Sales increased during that time, but February hasn't really been strong so far. In 2022, USD 7 million was achieved in February, USD 4 million in 2023 – February 2024 is at USD 3 million.
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In order to get anywhere close to last year in the first quarter of 2024, you need a strong remainder of February and an even stronger March – although last year's was already an outstanding month with USD 9 million. Traditionally, the months of May and November are the strongest for Star Citizen, so nothing is lost – but it seems to be more difficult than usual, at least at the moment, to persuade Citizens to spend money. There was a record-breaking year of new alpha patches in 2023, we are excited to see how that continues in 2024 and whether Squadron 42 will still be playable this year after the feature complete report – in whatever form.
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