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Greetings,
I am in early stages of trying to pick the topic and company for my RAP
I’m thinking about choosing topic nr 4 and write about a video game company which released a very highly anticipated and hyped game which upon release turned out to be, basically, unfinished, full of bugs, hugely disappointing.
The thing is that the company’s sales and profits were high in the year of release as they only create a new product every few years and so their financial statements for the year of release might not exactly seem like it was an exceptionally bad performance.
It’s the share price that shows it (over 40% drop withing a few weeks of the release, over 60% drop within a few months.) as well as lawsuits from investors which claimed they were misled. I find this story fascinating and would love to based my research on it.My question is whether this will be a good company for topic 4? The information pack states that “You must justify the choice of organisation and justify why you consider the
performance exceptionally poor” which I can do. But I’m worried that I can’t justify the choice well enough when looking from the point of view of the financial statements. Even when compared with a different company or industry average, it may seem like the company had a good yearI would appreciate advice.
The purpose of a company is to generate value for stakeholders. If it doesn’t, then this in simple terms would indicate that it has performed poorly.
You have justified your selection of company very well and from what I have read above and my own knowledge and experience of what the marking team are looking for this would be a suitable company choice. You would need to guide the reader through what has happened chronologically using graphs and charts to illustrate key points. The ‘usual’ ratios would be expected (based on profitability, liquidity, debt/gearing and investor ratios) somewhere in your work but focus mainly on how the bad strategic decisions of management have led to a weaker performance overall.
So having outlined your justification of company selection in the introduction, and/or possibly at the start of your Analysis and evaluation briefly summarised the key issues of what has gone wrong present the reader with a good application of the models. For example.it may be appropriate to apply Potter’s 5 Forces or SWOT/PESTLE as this may reflect reasons why it (seemingly to me one of madness from what you have said) took the decision to release the product prematurely without full investment and testing (had it promised to release It by a certain date and feared a backlash from customers, investors and media if it delayed? Was it because a rival had a game coming out so it wanted to beat their launch date or meet a predicted demand surge e.g. the Christmas market, or just arrogance e.g. as market leader or the like their products would fly off the shelves?)
You could in fact do a summary SWOT at the end -comparing its former position with the current state of play highlighting how its position and reputation have become weaker overall over the 3 year period and the threats it now faces.
Don’t forget to use a broad range of sources to illustrate points e.g. articles from specialist journals and trade publications and read the section in the Info Pack about how to do evaluation (rather than just describing what has gone on) together with opening the link to the article on critical thinking .
Good luck!
Hi Gillian
I’m glad you think the topic is suitable because like I mentioned I find the whole story quite fascinating.
Exactly like you said, the premature release was both due to several prior postponements and the fact that the studio wanted it out by Christmas. Still, it was a disaster.Thank you for your help. This clarifies a lot for me and I couldn’t hope for a better starting point for the project!
– Mat
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