Hostile Contact has purchased AFG servers

[SickPuppy]

On 1 October Hostile Contact Game Servers purchased AFG servers. We would like to thank our growing customer base for making this purchase possible.

 

With the acquisition of AFG, we have added several new server locations to include the UK. This merger will allow us to better support our customers gaming needs. We have added 9 new servers at 4 different locations.

 

The deployment goals of our business plan are well ahead of schedule. We have exceeded our 2008 customer targets and have now started working to meet our 2009 goals. This merger will allow us the opportunity to further expand our European operations.

 

Some things we are working on now include becoming a Preferred Honor Provider for America’s Army, joining the Pragmatic Deploy program, and offering free webhosting for our clients. We are negotiating with Electronic Arts to become a ranked server provider but they just do not want to help the little guys.

 

This expansion was made possible by providing quality affordable game servers with exceptional customer support. To quote our own business plans mission statement “low prices will attract the customers to the company, superior customer support will keep them there.”

 

Thank You

 

 

Edward Horner

CEO

Hostile Contact Game Servers

 

Michael Sheets

CFO

Hostile Contact Game Servers

[leetservers]

Good time as any to bring this up. Can someone explain to me how you can make money hosting AA HONOR servers? No matter how I run the numbers there is no profit.

 

=Bobby

[rich835]

If the truth be known, I think we all know that there is no decent money in being a GSP, whatever games you host.

It's a time consuming business, time being the thing we all forget about out of choice. If you were to put a price on time, it's a major loss business.

Sales are dropping everywhere, the consoles are winning hands down, just look at the amount of people lately that have sold their GSP business.

The kids who buy servers from us all, pay for them out of pocket money, and all they care about is getting it as cheap as possible.

It's a great shame.

[Derek]

What GSP'S are dropping? $1 slot hosts or the ones that think they can run a GSP out of a box?

[rich835]

There are 50p a slot hosts here in the UK now, seems like you have to run at a loss to sell. Here we have rising energy costs, so we should be putting our prices up, but people are doing the opposite just to keep selling.

Certainly looks to me like more and more people are advertising "GSP for sale" in this forum lately.

[swish]

Good time as any to bring this up. Can someone explain to me how you can make money hosting AA HONOR servers? No matter how I run the numbers there is no profit.

 

=Bobby

 

Take it form someone who's been there...you cant. We did honor for 2 years and it does not even break even.

[nosit1]

Congrats Hostile Contact! Great purchase.

[SickPuppy]

What GSP'S are dropping? $1 slot hosts or the ones that think they can run a GSP out of a box?

 

As the economy gets worse consumes will start looking for ways to cut cost. More and more customers are going to start to migrate to the $1.00 a slot GSPs. The same is true for Game Server Providers, they will start looking for bargain bandwidth providers.

 

Right now the bandwidth providers are losing customers and will have to become more competitive some are closing less populated facilities and consolidating theirData Centers. We have renegotiated the bandwidth fees at each Data center used by AFG. We have cut the bandwidth cost by almost 1/2 at each Data Center.

 

We are coming to Russa dude

[SickPuppy]

Take it form someone who's been there...you cant. We did honor for 2 years and it does not even break even.

 

We have crunched the numbers and we will be offering 26 Slot AA3 Honor servers for around $85 to $90

 

You will never get rich but it can be done

[SickPuppy]

There are 50p a slot hosts here in the UK now, seems like you have to run at a loss to sell. Here we have rising energy costs, so we should be putting our prices up, but people are doing the opposite just to keep selling.

Certainly looks to me like more and more people are advertising "GSP for sale" in this forum lately.

 

We now have two servers in the UK and all of our slots are $1.00 or less. We don't make that much be we do make a profit form them.

[SickPuppy]

Good time as any to bring this up. Can someone explain to me how you can make money hosting AA HONOR servers? No matter how I run the numbers there is no profit.

 

=Bobby

 

 

You have to incorporate AA into your long range strategic planning. The profit margin is low but the residual sales will make up for it.

[SickPuppy]

Congrats Hostile Contact! Great purchase.

 

Thanks nosit1, for those that do not know this started as a project that I needed for my MBA. I needed to prove the viability of my thesis.

[VicToMeyeZR]

Good time as any to bring this up. Can someone explain to me how you can make money hosting AA HONOR servers? No matter how I run the numbers there is no profit.

 

=Bobby

 

 

Well lets see. $1000 dollars a year for the license, that's $83.33/month. Pretty much everyone sells these for $3.99/slot so a 26 slot server is $103.74 Say you rent out 20 Honor servers that makes your per server price of $34.00. So this is easy. $103.74-$34.00 = $69.74 * 20 = $1394.80 profit. You can hold that on 2 box's for a cost of less than $150/month each so $300 for the 2 box's leave you with $1094.80 No if you can't find the $84/month out of that to pay that $1000 then maybe running a business isn't for you.

 

So lets look at a non-honor server. A ton of places rent them for $1.49/slot. x 26 = $38.74 x 20 Servers = $774.80

 

Hmmm, notice a BIG difference there? See everyone lies to their customers to make extra money on the honor servers. So like I said if you can't make money on Honor servers, then running a business must not be for you.

 

Also the reason our AA Honor servers will be $3.49/slot forever, and our promotions of $2.99 isn't just for 2 months, its for as long as they are a customer.

[leetservers]

Isn't there a ip setup fee/ip fee per month? And yes, running this business isn't for me, I guess all these years went by and we haven't learned a thing.

 

=bobby

[SickPuppy]

Well lets see. $1000 dollars a year for the license, that's $83.33/month.

 

That is not quite correct it is $1000 a year and $36 per server, minimum of 5 servers so the math should look like this

 

5 x $36 = $180 x 12 months = $2160 + the $1000 yearly fee = $3160 devide that by the min 5 servers = $632 per server or $52 a month per server.

 

$52 a month for license fees per server

add $1.00 a slot for a total of 26 slots = $26 + $52 = $78

charge $90 - $78 = $12 per server

 

Run 20 installs per box = $240 - $100 for bandwidth = $140 per box or $2800 per year. Over the life of the sever box, an average of 5 years that = $14,000 - the replacement cost of the server $2000 and you will see a 5 year profit of $12,000

 

Our Honor server prices will be $3.46 a slot but we will only rent 26 slot servers.

[leetservers]

Yes Puppy, when I was doing the numbers a while back I came up with $8 profit per 26 man sold. I included BW and power in my numbers. Besides I would NEVER run 500+ slots on a box, I dont care what the specs of the box is, thats suicide.

 

=Bobby

[VicToMeyeZR]

If you have 20 of them the price goes down to $34/month.

 

And your MATH is way off. ( i hope you didn't do the same math for your new purchase)

Try again bro.

 

Because you are going off of only having 5 servers ever. I said if you have 20 of them! See your perserver price goes down the more you have. SO yeah, if you only ever have 5 HONOR servers, then ya, you can't make a buck, but you shouldn't be paying for honor if you only have 5 AA customers now should you?

 

Not to mention, I said 20 AA servers on 2 box's. That's the standard 250 slots on a box.

[ECF]

Seems like only a very slim margin can be made on these at best after all the honor fees are taken into consideration.

 

Wish you the best with it.

[SickPuppy]

If you have 20 of them the price goes down to $34/month.

 

And your MATH is way off. ( i hope you didn't do the same math for your new purchase)

Try again bro.

 

Because you are going off of only having 5 servers ever. I said if you have 20 of them! See your perserver price goes down the more you have. SO yeah, if you only ever have 5 HONOR servers, then ya, you can't make a buck, but you shouldn't be paying for honor if you only have 5 AA customers now should you?

 

Not to mention, I said 20 AA servers on 2 box's. That's the standard 250 slots on a box.

 

5-20 is $36 the price drops at 21. Five is the min.

 

The servers we build can run 600 game slots without issue. AA is a RAM Hog so you need 16 gigs of ram on the box to run 20 installs. We also stripe our drives for better performance

 

I have also created custom scripts to minimize the RAM used. These scripts drop the RAM used in a full AA server from over 350 Megs to around 175.

[leetservers]

600 slots!!, LOL

 

No comment, I'll leave that to monk...

 

=Bobby

[adamnp]

Cheers on the purchase...Hope it works well

 

To comment IMO on the industry and GSP's never making cash......That's not true for all...Thankfully, We have been here now 2 years, with profit every single one of those 24 months. Everything depends on how you manage, run and promote yourselves. What do you get into, what do you make the most off of...Some of us are niche, some of us are broad, some of us are $1 a slot, some of us are $4 a slot...There is money in the market, you just need to be smart and not worry about customer #'s, worry about bottom line $ and stay away from the fads. I personally feel anything lower than $2 a slot is suicide in the 5 - 10 year range, if it gets that far.

 

Anywho, not to stray offtopic, congrats on the purchase once again I hope it works out well for you! They had some nice keyword ranks on some of those domains, use them wisely!

[SickPuppy]

Yes Puppy, when I was doing the numbers a while back I came up with $8 profit per 26 man sold. I included BW and power in my numbers. Besides I would NEVER run 500+ slots on a box, I dont care what the specs of the box is, thats suicide.

 

=Bobby

 

Today’s servers are more than capable of running 500 slots. If you build good systems with a lot of RAM, the only issue you run into is Bandwidth usage.

 

The weak link in the system the bandwidth. Get too high on your slot count and the bandwidth fees kill you. We have had as many as 480 simultaneous users connected to one box. The CPUs hovered around 65-85% and the RAM usage remained below 7 Gigs.

 

Oh, and by the way thanks for hijacking my thread. I think that is some kind of forum rule violation here.

[SickPuppy]

Seems like only a very slim margin can be made on these at best after all the honor fees are taken into consideration.

 

Wish you the best with it.

 

The only one getting rich is Pragmatic the fees are way too high.

Can you show me another investment that will payout $14,000 in five years

[leetservers]

I didn't mean to hijack your thread, it was just a natural progression I guess.

 

IMHO Pragmatic killed a FREE game, Let's face it, AA is a awesome game and only 400 or so honor servers out there in the USA, thats pretty sad. There should be alot more than that.

 

=bobby

[SickPuppy]

I didn't mean to hijack your thread, it was just a natural progression I guess.

 

IMHO Pragmatic killed a FREE game, Let's face it, AA is a awesome game and only 400 or so honor servers out there in the USA, thats pretty sad. There should be alot more than that.

 

=bobby

 

I was hoping that they would do away with Honor in AA3 but according to pragmatic, it will be the same as AA 2.8

 

Look at how many COD4 servers are running 3 or 4 thousand