Why is it illogical to only want to sell products that do well in your native markets and hopefully as well overseas?
Because most successful major multinational corporations have figured out that you
adjust for foreign markets, not try to shoehorn your principles on them (or at the very least, in addition to trying to shoehorn your principles on them). It's why McDonald's sells burgers made of lamb in India (and
a lot of other stuff in other places). It's why Coca-Cola sells
that nasty-ass stuff they sell in Italy but not here (in the U.S.). Or for that matter, have you ever heard of
Qoo? Actually, aren't you German? If so, you may very well have since it was sold there for a few years, but about 99.99% of the people in the United States haven't. It's a niche brand of non-carbonated fruit drinks sold by Coca-Cola primarily in Asian markets. Why does a multi-billion dollar multinational behemoth like Coca-Cola sell Qoo?
Why support a niche product that does okay but not fantastic in a region outside of your core market?
Because that's what the people there want. I'm not saying that you can't try to push your own stuff there, but if you want to be a multinational company like NCsoft says it wants to, you have to have a keen sense of what sells and where.
I'm not disputing that the thought process you're engaging in is probably the exact thought process that NCsoft is going through. I'm just saying that for a company to "take it to the next level," so to speak, it has to factor in local markets; to not do so poses a serious risk of disinterest and, depending on the circumstances, backlash against the company that tries to come in and impose their culture on others.
What's kind of weird about this specific circumstance is that NCsoft actually
used to have a good strategy in this arena. After all, it
did fund City of Heroes and it
did buy out Cryptic's interest in the IP way back when. That's why I think that sometime within the last few years, there has been some kind of fundamental management shift within the company. Not at the CEO level, but slightly lower. I honestly believe that someone who either is grossly incompetent or who doesn't have the best interest of NCsoft at heart has Taek-Jin Kim's ear right now--like a corporate
Wormtongue.
Why sell it's IP when you've never sold off any IP of any product in an industry where few IPs are sold after cancellation?
Because smart people make mistakes just like stupid people do. The difference between smart people and stupid people, though, is that smart people learn from their mistakes and try to make right by them when possible, whereas stupid people double down on their mistakes, adamantly refusing to change course, hoping the problem magically goes away.
That is the position that NCsoft is in currently. At one time, they were a smart company with a diverse game portfolio and profit-making enterprises in multiple international markets. Now, they're an insular Asian publisher that churns out games that only appeal predominantly to an Asian market, who has basically put all of their eggs into one basket: the success of Blade and Soul in China, which will either make or break them as a company. Killing off City of Heroes is obviously backfiring on them and has done quite a bit of harm in a market that would have been an AWESOME hedge against something like, for example, the Chinese economy tanking, which at this point would kill NCsoft.
So what would a smart person do? Try to make right by it. I honestly think it's too late for them to rescue City of Heroes themselves, to try to go back to the way things were. However, if they want to get at least some measure of goodwill here, they're going to
have to let it go and work to shed their image as a game-killer. Will it solve all of their problems? No, but at least it's a start, and to do otherwise would basically be conceding the North American and European markets to other companies, admitting that NCsoft will likely not be a major multinational corporation anytime in the near future.