![]() In total we are getting products from something like eight developers across the world. RS: We've got a very small in-house development team. GSUK: How many people do you employ, and how many teams are working on games at any given time? They have made a fortune out of Game over the years, and the tables have turned and they've gone, "Ooh, I'm not going to support you now!" I think it's pathetic. I'm not saying Game should be shored up, but look at it-£18m loss on £900m turnover-they probably spent that on paperclips and pens! I think the whole thing has been blown out of proportion, and I also think that some of the publishers should be shot who are not supporting Game. You look at the banks-look at the money the banks have lost! People shore them up. You look at other industries and there are people out there losing hundreds of millions of pounds. RS: I tell you what worries me-a business that is turning over £900m and made a paltry loss of £18m is being absolutely taken to the cleaners. GSUK: So does what's happening to Game worry you a little bit? ![]() And also, we do great business in South Africa, Australia, even the Middle East, so without retail we wouldn't have a business. ![]() We also have great support in Europe from key retailers like GameStop and MediaMart, in Germany, Scandinavia and Italy. We get fantastic support from people like Game and PC World, and a number of specialist independent retailers across the country. RS: Physical retail is absolutely essential. GSUK: Presumably physical retail is important to Excalibur? So this is not your Modern Warfare, where on day one they sell 5 million copies worldwide-this is a slow, long-term burn of products, and we're still selling Euro Truck, UK Truck and Farming Simulator and some of these have been out for three or four years.Ī lot of that's down to reviews-to use Street Cleaning Simulator as an example, a lot of people laughed at that, but actually it's a hell of a good product, and I think slowly people are coming round to the fact that not everything in life is "drive a car fast, kill everybody, or roll a tank through London and shoot the daylights out of buildings." There is a whole market of people who actually want to do something a bit more casual, and that's really where our market is.įarming Simulator is by far and away Excalibur's most popular franchise. We got involved with products like Euro Truck Simulator, which again has sold about half a million copies worldwide, UK Truck Simulator which has sold somewhere in the region of 75,000 copies in the UK alone. Worldwide, it sold, and you'll laugh, about 1.8 million copies, so that in a way became a formula. And that is really where our life started under the Excalibur brand, by publishing Farming Simulator. Three years ago, Microsoft pulled the plug on Flight Simulator, and we looked around and said, "we have a formula here where people like simulations." We were lucky, and we happened to be talking to the developers of Farming Simulator. Drive a train from London to Brighton, and that sort of thing. Fly a 787, fly an A380, fly from to New York, London airports, etc. We started our life publishing simulation add-ons for Microsoft Flight Simulator and Microsoft Train Simulator under a brand called First Class Simulations and that proved to be very, very popular. ![]() Contact Sales, which is the company that holds Excalibur Publishing, is 15 years old on the 24th March, so individuals have been around a long time. Robert Stallibrass: Well, most of the people here, or certainly myself and my co-director, have been in the games industry for about 25 years. GameSpot UK: Tell us a bit about Excalibur-the games, the company, the history. By clicking 'enter', you agree to GameSpot's ![]()
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