http://baby.boom.com.hk/portfolio/research/asia_company_report.asp?symbol=036570&country=Korea&marketCode=KR
These go all the way back to September 2004.
(I found them when I was trying to find the article that mentioned how NCsoft had expected sales of 6 million for GW2 and only hit 2M.)
Then there's this: http://www.kdbdw.com/bbs/download/166003.pdf?attachmentId=166003 "NCsoft (036570 KS)
Lowered expectations; Increased valuation merits"
And another report from August 2012: http://equity.co.kr/upfile/issue/2012/08/09/1344496474848.pdf
Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite
"2Q12 operating loss on voluntary retirements, but already priced in - KITC Full Report - PDF - 2012 年 8 月 6 日
2Q12 operating loss on voluntary retirements, but already priced in NCsoft announced it would recognize voluntary retirement costs in 2Q12. We forecast 500 employees (20% of total 2,400 at headquarters) will opt to retire. Assuming a per person cost of W30mn, retirement expenses should reach W15bn. "
"Voluntary retirements". LOL. 500 out of 2,400 employees voluntarily retiring in a single quarter?!
Quote from: Kosmos on December 11, 2012, 10:05:09 AM
"Voluntary retirements". LOL. 500 out of 2,400 employees voluntarily retiring in a single quarter?!
Well considering the reviews over at Glassdoor.com (http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/NCsoft-Reviews-E23242.htm) I'd probably be expecting a lot of people to quit, too. :P But I think that would be giving NCSoft more credit for foresight than they seem capable of.
Quote from: Risko_Vinsheen on December 11, 2012, 10:13:44 AM
Well considering the reviews over at Glassdoor.com (http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/NCsoft-Reviews-E23242.htm) I'd probably be expecting a lot of people to quit, too. :P But I think that would be giving NCSoft more credit for foresight than they seem capable of.
I think Glassdoor is all US. The projected "voluntary retirements" were for the HQ in Korea. I'd be willing to bet they were "voluntary" in the exact same way Richard Garriott's exit was.
Quote from: Kosmos on December 11, 2012, 10:05:09 AM
"2Q12 operating loss on voluntary retirements, but already priced in - KITC Full Report - PDF - 2012 年 8 月 6 日
2Q12 operating loss on voluntary retirements, but already priced in NCsoft announced it would recognize voluntary retirement costs in 2Q12. We forecast 500 employees (20% of total 2,400 at headquarters) will opt to retire. Assuming a per person cost of W30mn, retirement expenses should reach W15bn. "
"Voluntary retirements". LOL. 500 out of 2,400 employees voluntarily retiring in a single quarter?!
2Q as in 2nd quarter as in ends in June. Paragon was shut down in 3Q.
Voluntary retirement probably means they were given the option to take a retirement package or be fired. I recall a mention of that earlier in the year.
That's still a lot of retirement costs.
Quote from: Samuraiko on December 11, 2012, 09:36:49 AM
http://baby.boom.com.hk/portfolio/research/asia_company_report.asp?symbol=036570&country=Korea&marketCode=KR
These go all the way back to September 2004.
(I found them when I was trying to find the article that mentioned how NCsoft had expected sales of 6 million for GW2 and only hit 2M.)
Then there's this: http://www.kdbdw.com/bbs/download/166003.pdf?attachmentId=166003 "NCsoft (036570 KS)
Lowered expectations; Increased valuation merits"
And another report from August 2012: http://equity.co.kr/upfile/issue/2012/08/09/1344496474848.pdf
Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite
Well it appears that nobody believed in the target price projected by any of these securities companies.
The one from Hana Financial, which came out when the 2Q numbers did, predicted a 3Q sales growth that was around double of what actually happened so I can understand if investors have doubts about the 380,000 KrW 12 month target price, downgraded from 450,000.
The brief from KDB Daewoo that came out with the 3Q numbers has their 12 month target price of 310,000, down from 420,000. They are expecting GW2 to nearly triple the amount it made in 3Q, when it was out only for a month. Sorry you can't really project sales linearly like that. Yes it's the holiday season and yes Time magazine made it their GotY but who reads Time for their video game preferences? They also seriously downplayed Blade & Soul until it's roll out in China (as well as GW2).
The third is from a Hong Kong based firm. It also came out when the 3Q numbers and their 12 month target price is down to 300,000 from 340,000. Wow these guys were conservative compared to the other two with their original target prices over 400,000. Of course as I write this NCSoft closed at 156,000. Oh well, they have 12 months to get the price back up there again.
At the time they were released, all three still maintained that the stock was still a buy, even as it was on a steady downward trend since last October. Now all three state that GW2 and B&S will blow up big time in sales once the China ports are down and it is this that they are placing their bets on for 2013. One did mention that they expected that the stock will be kept up in the mean time by a short squeeze of foreign investors who were betting the stock would drop and when it doesn't (
giggle) there will be a rush of buys to cover the losses; people buying because the stock is now cheap compared to where it was; and lastly because investors would want to in on it before the 4Q/year end numbers come out in February.
I have a sneaky suspicion that all three of these firms hold major positions in NCSoft stock and are trying to drum up support to get the stock price back up to where they can get out without taking a bath, because it's not a loss until you sell. If not then they're drinking the same kool-aid.
As an aside, it seems that NCSoft's ownership of a major league baseball team in Korea while it's profits were under pressure may have also been a reason why investors have lost confidence in the company.
Didn't it occur to any one of the three that China might actually ban Bits and Tits because of the....bits and tits? And the pole-dancer animations. They are quite prudish over there when it comes to....bits and tits.
http://www.joystiq.com/2010/07/10/report-china-to-ban-violent-sexual-marketing-of-online-games/ (http://www.joystiq.com/2010/07/10/report-china-to-ban-violent-sexual-marketing-of-online-games/)
Yeah, I ran into several of those totally LUDICROUS analyst reports (with projections at 300,000+) when googling = digging thru the net for dirt on NCsoft & Nexon. I saved them somewhere, (?) I read the fine print on some and I was really surprised that I was even able to find them - they should've been private... presumably - someone paid them for those reports??
They we're all WAY off -(just plain wrong in a huge way)- and my "B.S. Detector" went off big-time. It got me to thinking about TJKim's stock sell-off, I suspected back-room dealing to put super-inflated projections for the stock and how many people will get charged with stock manipulation... IF anyone ever looks into that, TBH - IDK if they even have any such agency to do that in S.Korea??
*Note* I meant "bullshit detector" not "B&S" the game = But, given these are my initials (Yes, I use my real name here) I should've caught that possible context mix-up before I posted it. But, knowing myself like I do - :roll: that's probably why I missed it!
Quote from: Victoria Victrix on December 11, 2012, 12:25:25 PM
Didn't it occur to any one of the three that China might actually ban Bits and Tits because of the....bits and tits? And the pole-dancer animations. They are quite prudish over there when it comes to....bits and tits.
http://www.joystiq.com/2010/07/10/report-china-to-ban-violent-sexual-marketing-of-online-games/ (http://www.joystiq.com/2010/07/10/report-china-to-ban-violent-sexual-marketing-of-online-games/)
I'm the first to admit that the virtual voyeur character creator in B&S creeps me out at some primal level.
Anyways that article was about techniques surrounding marketing of games. So no advertising the bloodshed and jiggle.
As for "poll dancing", well the dance emotes on the female models are ... well ... provocative. But then again I understand that's how kids dance nowadays. :roll:
I found
this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KV2UPa44w8) Youtube video on B&S dancing. Again the highlighted dancing by yourself videos seem suggestive but near the end they have a group of characters in a game setting dancing, they way some players start dancing in CoH waiting for the last player to arrive (before the advent of faster team translocation) and it didn't look bad, guys look like dorks and girls look all ... coordinated like. :-[
Quote from: Samuraiko on December 11, 2012, 09:36:49 AM
http://baby.boom.com.hk/portfolio/research/asia_company_report.asp?symbol=036570&country=Korea&marketCode=KR
From this article :
"Meanwhile, NCsoft plans to spend W15bn to recruit players for its professional baseball team"(that's about $14million, or £9million btw)
Good grief...it's beginning to look like my tinfoil hat theory about TJKim edging out of CEOing so he can run the company's damn baseball team might not have been so tinfoily after all... :o
My money is still on TJ Kim wanting (or being dragged by the nuts- maybe by the wife?) to go do the "expert/consultant thing" for Nexon's - Mabinogi 2 Arena.
I think them getting into gaming was a fluke = I really think (after looking at their resumes/employment histories & such) these are a bunch of Tele-Com type people (In the Hardware, and Service camps) that really just set-out to create demand and/or traffic for their hardware sales, mobile service & broadband network service companies.
Via a never-ending series of revamped "Golden Axe", "Xevious", & more recently Isometric View RPGs of the Planscape-Torment/Neverwinter-Nights type. More & more Clones with new themes and art on the same basic mechanics every few months or as often as they can sucker people into buying playing these "new versions" of what is really just the basic Tetris or Solitaire "stuff to do with your phone while bored" phone apps = that soak up bandwidth - that isn't (or wasn't?) "unlimited" or "free" when they started all this...
Sorta like, their Cyber-Gaming-Cafes thing - a business to support another business, to create demand were there wasn't much before. Or, maybe I'm totally wrong, actually I prefer to say "mistaken"...
While the look of Bits and Tits never appealed to me personally - and I can readily understand why women especially would be offended by it - if memory serves PG-13 does allow for "Beavis and Butt-head" even if it's not to my taste. I'd also created some of my own cheesecake and beefcake toons in CoH, so I can't knock other MMO's too hard for that.
I've heard China has several laws around game playing, including pop-ups informing the user that one has now spent X hours continuously logged in and does one wish to continue.
Quote from: johnrobey on December 11, 2012, 02:34:27 PM
While the look of Bits and Tits never appealed to me personally - and I can readily understand why women especially would be offended by it - if memory serves PG-13 does allow for "Beavis and Butt-head" even if it's not to my taste. I'd also created some of my own cheesecake and beefcake toons in CoH, so I can't knock other MMO's too hard for that.
I've heard China has several laws around game playing, including pop-ups informing the user that one has now spent X hours continuously logged in and does one wish to continue.
I played Chinese Aion (in Regions 2, 3 and 11) while beta testing NA Aion, and the popup doesn't ask you if you wish to continue. It first informs you that your drops and XP have been reduced (by 50% if I remember correctly) after an hour or two, and then after that they're cut off completely, and you get flung off for the day whether you like it or not. I forget how many hours that all takes; four total? It was several years ago. Apparently it's only for children and teens; adults can put in what is their equivalent of their social security numbers to prove their age and get around it, but as I'm an American I was unable to do that.
You can also see these Asian Government control tactics even bleeding into the NA versions of Aion and the also-Korean MMORPG Tera, Tera being made by BlueHole Studios who are arch-enemies of NCSoft Korea. Both Aion and Tera will give you hourly rundowns concerning how long you have been online playing. They don't force you to log or restrict your XP or drops like their Asian counterparts do, but apparently that notification and tracking is built right into the software and can't be removed for whatever reason, legal or otherwise. I guess Western translation teams either are not allowed to or are simply incapable of doing away with this hourly warning altogether so there it sits, modified.
Quote from: BryanSnowden on December 11, 2012, 01:44:27 PM
My money is still on TJ Kim wanting (or being dragged by the nuts- maybe by the wife?) to go do the "expert/consultant thing" for Nexon's - Mabinogi 2 Arena.
I think them getting into gaming was a fluke = I really think (after looking at their resumes/employment histories & such) these are a bunch of Tele-Com type people (In the Hardware, and Service camps) that really just set-out to create demand and/or traffic for their hardware sales, mobile service & broadband network service companies.
Via a never-ending series of revamped "Golden Axe", "Xevious", & more recently Isometric View RPGs of the Planscape-Torment/Neverwinter-Nights type. More & more Clones with new themes and art on the same basic mechanics every few months or as often as they can sucker people into buying playing these "new versions" of what is really just the basic Tetris or Solitaire "stuff to do with your phone while bored" phone apps = that soak up bandwidth - that isn't (or wasn't?) "unlimited" or "free" when they started all this...
Sorta like, their Cyber-Gaming-Cafes thing - a business to support another business, to create demand were there wasn't much before. Or, maybe I'm totally wrong, actually I prefer to say "mistaken"...
My mind boggles if NCSoft failed to anticipate the fan response to their decisions and resulting fall-out. This as much as anything indicates they don't know their industry as well as one would expect. What you've written helps me understand why that might be.
I saw on one site yesterday (sorry, i'm not going back to look it up to provide a documenting link) that GW2 may be in trouble.
Quote from: Surelle on December 11, 2012, 02:59:36 PM
I played Chinese Aion (in Regions 2, 3 and 11) while beta testing NA Aion, and the popup doesn't ask you if you wish to continue. It first informs you that your drops and XP have been reduced (by 50% if I remember correctly) after an hour or two, and then after that they're cut off completely, and you get flung off for the day whether you like it or not. I forget how many hours that all takes; four total? It was several years ago. Apparently it's only for children and teens; adults can put in what is their equivalent of their social security numbers to prove their age and get around it, but as I'm an American I was unable to do that.
You can also see these Asian Government control tactics even bleeding into the NA versions of Aion and the also-Korean MMORPG Tera, Tera being made by BlueHole Studios who are arch-enemies of NCSoft Korea. Both Aion and Tera will give you hourly rundowns concerning how long you have been online playing. They don't force you to log or restrict your XP or drops like their Asian counterparts do, but apparently that notification and tracking is built right into the software and can't be removed for whatever reason, legal or otherwise. I guess Western translation teams either are not allowed to or are simply incapable of doing away with this hourly warning altogether so there it sits, modified.
Thank you for posting info on that.
Quote from: johnrobey on December 11, 2012, 02:34:27 PM
I've heard China has several laws around game playing, including pop-ups informing the user that one has now spent X hours continuously logged in and does one wish to continue.
There are similar rules in Korea including one that bans minors from midnight to 6am.
Quote from: FatherXmas on December 11, 2012, 12:09:40 PM
I have a sneaky suspicion that all three of these firms hold major positions in NCSoft stock and are trying to drum up support to get the stock price back up to where they can get out without taking a bath, because it's not a loss until you sell. If not then they're drinking the same kool-aid.
The guy at Daewoo in particular strikes me as President of the NCsoftcore Fan Club. After reading that I wouldn't trust Daewoo's projections with a plug nickel.