What we are looking at is not a buyout of NCsoft by Nexon, but rather a partnership that is short of a full merger, but has involved each company investing in stock with the other, and joining efforts. THAT is the refocus that the stock-watchers are reporting.
Which also explains the use of these nebulous corporate waffle phrases from NCsoft about CoH :-
"In a realignment of company focus and publishing support, NCsoft has made the decision to close Paragon Studios."
"The continued support of the franchise no longer fits with our long-term goals for the company."...and also explains the company mission statement made by Taek-jin Kim on NCsoft's site :-
Moving forward, we envision new ways to use Internet technologies to entertain, delight, and bring people together. This means new products, reaching more customers, around the world. The future is bright, indeed. We hope you have enjoyed playing our games. We thank you for your support as we innovate and grow. Thank you.This last statement pre-dates the NC-Nexon 'merger', but in it you can clearly see a foreshadow of the insultingly dismissive comment the company made on their Facebook site recently where they said :-
'City of Heroes' is the world's first and best Super Heroes MMORPG. It has received unconditional love for more than 8 years and it is like a family member of this company.
However, to provide a better game and service in the future, we have made the tough decision to discontinue the game. It was very hard on all of us here at NCSOFT.
NCSOFT will strive for a better game and superior service and anticipates the day that we will meet again. We are confident that we will not look back towards today's choice with regret.I do not share their 'confidence'. I believe they will indeed find themselves looking back towards their choice with much regret.
I did wonder for a while if this whole thing was about deliberately driving shares down, but the simple truth we have to face is that CoH is not a large enough part of their global operation to have much of an impact on their share price for good or ill.
Or at least WASN'T.
As Ammon has so eloquently pointed out elsewhere on these forums, negative PR can and does impact companies' share prices. If NCsoft were Nemesis enough to have planned a Machievellian fall and rise of their own stocks, they'd also have been able to predict the extent of the #SaveCoH movement, which they clearly were not. The announcement of the closure of CoH pushed the share prices up marginally, just before an expected steep rise at the launch of GW2. But since then, the stocks have steadily fallen, due largely I believe to market overexpectation of the successes of GW2 and B&S.
The upshot of that is the market is now LOOKING at NCsoft, expecting them to find a way to climb back up the slope they're currently sliding down...and while attention is focused on NCsoft uncertainty, the power of our objection to the closure of CoH is vastly magnified. We CAN have a real impact now - something NCsoft definitely do not want. They have tried to remain as silent as possible, but then they went and said this :-
Lastly, for the users who enjoy other games of NCSOFT, we would greatly appreciate it if you can hold back the negative and hurtful comments.Made to a dissatisfied customer as it was, that comment is quite simply corporate suicide.