NCSoft Stockwatch

[kierthos]

Down 2000 when I last checked. They're within spitting distance of their 52 week low.

[malonkey1]

Down 2000 when I last checked. They're within spitting distance of their 52 week low.

Spitting is a disgusting habit!

[JWBullfrog]

Different view:

"We are heroes. This is what we do."

One thing happening to heroes often is being framed. So:
 - Nexon did buy a large part of NC stock this year - as I understood that part was owned by Mr. CEO himself before.
 - NC is tanking, widely believed due to very bad public standing, analysts have them on "buy" - they still have the Lineage stuff that works pretty well on their hometurf, GW and GW2 - and is still tanking despite christmas sales.
 - Someone is buying, even enough to have NC rise a lil from time to time.

So, what if that "someone" is actually Nexon trying to get NC for "very cheap", having Mr. CEO play their cards, making bad "strategic decisison" to create bad publicity - picking us as we were the most probable group of (now ex-)customers to deliver?

Interesting idea but far too complicated. The old idea of Occam's razor might be a better way of looking at things.

[HarvesterOfEyes]

Interesting idea but far too complicated. The old idea of Occam's razor might be a better way of looking at things.

Agreed. Stupidity is a far more likely cause of general corporate woes. Where it comes to stock prices, the market is quite capable of being irrational over the short-term.

[malonkey1]

Interesting idea but far too complicated. The old idea of Occam's razor might be a better way of looking at things.

Yeah, but more specifically Hanlon's Razor (Do not assume malice when stupidity is just as likely).

[FatherXmas]

Different view:

"We are heroes. This is what we do."

One thing happening to heroes often is being framed. So:
 - Nexon did buy a large part of NC stock this year - as I understood that part was owned by Mr. CEO himself before.
 - NC is tanking, widely believed due to very bad public standing, analysts have them on "buy" - they still have the Lineage stuff that works pretty well on their hometurf, GW and GW2 - and is still tanking despite christmas sales.
 - Someone is buying, even enough to have NC rise a lil from time to time.

So, what if that "someone" is actually Nexon trying to get NC for "very cheap", having Mr. CEO play their cards, making bad "strategic decisison" to create bad publicity - picking us as we were the most probable group of (now ex-)customers to deliver?

It's not Nexon because if it was, as a 5% or greater stockholder, any further accumulation needs to be reported publicly because you can really cause havoc to the price when you control that much stock in a company.

[Sajaana]

The Korean Exchange may operate by a different set of rules.

Here's what I'm thinking.

There's a lot of uncertainty with regard to NCSoft's earnings next quarter, let alone next year.  A lot is riding on how well GW2 did in the West--not just in terms of box sales--but, more importantly, with gem sales.  It did well in box sales, but did it underperform?  Some sources said it did.  Also, what about retention?  They are in a position only now to gague this.

There's also uncertainly when it comes to NCSoft's appeal in the West.  On the one hand, they seem to be baking away.  But if they are backing away, why all the "to do" with the restructuring?  This will not impact GW2 or Aion now, but what about a year from now?  A year is shorter than you think, and a lot can change, a lot remains uncertain.

Also, there's the whole reception of Blade and Soul in Asia.  I've heard that the title wasn't as well received as was hoped when it launched in China.  And if it can't do well in China, the odds of it doing well here or in Europe are...well...not as good.

Aion, Lineage and Lineage 2 are the big money makers here.  But interest in all three is fading.  As far as anything else coming downthe pipe, you have Wildstar, which is a very under-the-radar niche project still a year or more away.  It isn't predicted to net serious numbers.  It's also a high-risk tile.

Which means NCSoft's entire future rests on its collaboration with Nexon: Mabinogi 2.  It's about the only title in development with the potential to win a mass international audience.  And it isn't even NCSoft's.  It's Nexon's.

Now NCSoft's fundamentals are strong, but in the tech world, strength isn't where you are at, but where you are going.  And where is NCSoft going right now?  Their major titles are old, they have less of them, and they've placed a lot of eggs in relatively few baskets.

All of this seems to correspond to why their stock price is down.  It's a mature company that looks set in its ways; the odds are that it won't get much bigger than it already is, and the odds are greater that they'll lose market share in the coming years to the other heavyweights (SOE, Blizzard/Vivendi, Square/Enix, EA) and soon-to-be heavyweights from China (NetDragon, Giant Interactive).  This, combined with competition from newer, more innovative startups that have the potential to grow larger, and NCSoft is looking like US Steel in the 80's.

Again, that's the long view.  The short view is, as I said, uncertainty.

[Illusionss]

I just have this really funny feeling that Wildstar will never see the light of day. Its not an Asian-themed game, nor to my knowledge will it be oriented to the type of gameplay Asians prefer.

So I doubt we will be looking at that. This also worries me a bit regarding GW2 [that it pretty much ignores preferred Asian playstyles], although your character there shares the VERY annoying Asian trait of appearing not to be a day over 15, especially the female ones. Maybe some of the male choices might appear to be 18; its a matter of how you look at it, I guess.

I miss my Bane Spider, who was a middle-aged guy who had been a soldier most of his life. He had the scars and greying hair to prove it. Ha, you ain't getting ~nothing~ like that in anything NCSoftheaded is putting out now. You're 15 or you're not even.

I miss you, Arbiter Blaylock. 

[FatherXmas]

I just have this really funny feeling that Wildstar will never see the light of day. Its not an Asian-themed game, nor to my knowledge will it be oriented to the type of gameplay Asians prefer.

So I doubt we will be looking at that. This also worries me a bit regarding GW2 [that it pretty much ignores preferred Asian playstyles], although your character there shares the VERY annoying Asian trait of appearing not to be a day over 15, especially the female ones. Maybe some of the male choices might appear to be 18; its a matter of how you look at it, I guess.

I miss my Bane Spider, who was a middle-aged guy who had been a soldier most of his life. He had the scars and greying hair to prove it. Ha, you ain't getting ~nothing~ like that in anything NCSoftheaded is putting out now. You're 15 or you're not even.

I miss you, Arbiter Blaylock. 

Wildstar is being developed by members of the original WoW team.  I think that game is doing well in Asia or am I misremembering? 

[Illusionss]

I think the salient thing to carry away from any conversation regarding this company is, what is logical/expected from where we sit has no bearing whatsoever on their decisions.

Therefore I will be very surprised to see Wildstar released into the wild, as it were.

[Blitzwing]

I think the salient thing to carry away from any conversation regarding this company is, what is logical/expected from where we sit has no bearing whatsoever on their decisions.

Therefore I will be very surprised to see Wildstar released into the wild, as it were.

That's what I've been thinking...Wildstar's effectively dead on arrival, if it ever gets THAT far...things are about to get very interesting, I believe....

[FatherXmas]

At this point, with all the money NCSoft has poured into the company, not trying to recoup any of it will look bad to it's investors, not to mention everyone at corporate who kept green lighting the project through the various development review panels. 

They've promo the game at both E3 and Pax this year.  They have their dev blog hyping parts of the game to build up buzz every few weeks.   It's been named by several MMO sites as most anticipated MMO for 2013.   And looking at their new job postings from two weeks ago, it's obvious that they are approaching the final crunch (lots of QA positions).  So I'm guessing six months until release, three to four months until closed Beta.

[FatherXmas]

The Korean Exchange may operate by a different set of rules.

Here's what I'm thinking.

There's a lot of uncertainty with regard to NCSoft's earnings next quarter, let alone next year.  A lot is riding on how well GW2 did in the West--not just in terms of box sales--but, more importantly, with gem sales.  It did well in box sales, but did it underperform?  Some sources said it did.  Also, what about retention?  They are in a position only now to gague this.

There's also uncertainly when it comes to NCSoft's appeal in the West.  On the one hand, they seem to be baking away.  But if they are backing away, why all the "to do" with the restructuring?  This will not impact GW2 or Aion now, but what about a year from now?  A year is shorter than you think, and a lot can change, a lot remains uncertain.

Also, there's the whole reception of Blade and Soul in Asia.  I've heard that the title wasn't as well received as was hoped when it launched in China.  And if it can't do well in China, the odds of it doing well here or in Europe are...well...not as good.

Aion, Lineage and Lineage 2 are the big money makers here.  But interest in all three is fading.  As far as anything else coming downthe pipe, you have Wildstar, which is a very under-the-radar niche project still a year or more away.  It isn't predicted to net serious numbers.  It's also a high-risk tile.

Which means NCSoft's entire future rests on its collaboration with Nexon: Mabinogi 2.  It's about the only title in development with the potential to win a mass international audience.  And it isn't even NCSoft's.  It's Nexon's.

Now NCSoft's fundamentals are strong, but in the tech world, strength isn't where you are at, but where you are going.  And where is NCSoft going right now?  Their major titles are old, they have less of them, and they've placed a lot of eggs in relatively few baskets.

All of this seems to correspond to why their stock price is down.  It's a mature company that looks set in its ways; the odds are that it won't get much bigger than it already is, and the odds are greater that they'll lose market share in the coming years to the other heavyweights (SOE, Blizzard/Vivendi, Square/Enix, EA) and soon-to-be heavyweights from China (NetDragon, Giant Interactive).  This, combined with competition from newer, more innovative startups that have the potential to grow larger, and NCSoft is looking like US Steel in the 80's.

Again, that's the long view.  The short view is, as I said, uncertainty.

Well B&S hasn't launched in China yet.  It entered the 2nd 40 day round of beta just three weeks ago and a beta key to it was going for $320 on the "black market". 

Watching the two Chinese trailers at that link I would say that they cranked down the blood, the breast physics and perhaps eliminated the female outfits that had a lot of exposed skin or translucency (well added leggings, linings and full body stockings to cover up the skin bits).  The second video still sort of shows the "sexuality" of the game by showing off all the pretty people busting a move to a K-pop song.

[Illusionss]

At this point, with all the money NCSoft has poured into the company, not trying to recoup any of it will look bad to it's investors, not to mention everyone at corporate who kept green lighting the project through the various development review panels.

Like I said, it looks logical to release it.

That's why I'll be very surprised to see it actually released. The last thing that bunch is about is "making sense," nor do they give a flying whatever about what looks good to their stockholders.

[Atlantea]

Like I said, it looks logical to release it.

That's why I'll be very surprised to see it actually released. The last thing that bunch is about is "making sense," nor do they give a flying whatever about what looks good to their stockholders.

I think one way to look at it is - 

Us being hyper-cynical and just thinking that the opposite of good sense is automatically what NCsoftcore will do is not going to work all the time. Sometimes they'll do something that validates that POV. But sometimes they may not.

I think the main thing - the missing piece - is that we're still not sure under what rules they are operating. If it's some form of business logic, it's certainly not western style business.

We've tried figuring out the cultural end of it a couple of months back with the whole "kibun" thread and observations of Asian face-saving culture. I think we might've been on to something there. But I don't think that's 100% it either.

If this were an entirely Western business, this would be much easier. Executives at Activision/Blizzard or SOE aren't that difficult to figure out. We start from the ground floor with mostly the same cultural background and only have to account for the "corporate" culture and what we can find in the background of the corporate officers that shapes their individual personalities and we can predict with a fair amount of reasonable accuracy what they're likely to do given the right set of circumstances.

With NCSoft it's much more difficult figuring them out. We thought we understood them until they announced the cancellation. The other game closures (Auto Assault, Tabula Rasa etc) appeared to be motivated by standard profit/loss.

City of Heroes closure does NOT make sense. So we've been trying to figure out the reasoning behind it. But we're hampered now at least in part by the cultural divide.

But again - I don't think we can generalize too much. An individual or set of individuals made this decision. And culture/kibun/face-saving might be PART of the influence, but there has to be something more there. It might be as simple as someone trying to cover their ass over bad decisions elsewhere. It might be "creative accounting". It might be collateral damage over the Garriots.

My point is - don't get too locked into one way of looking at it and always try to apply both Occams and Hanlan's Razor.

[CG]

At this point, with all the money NCSoft has poured into the company, not trying to recoup any of it will look bad to it's investors, not to mention everyone at corporate who kept green lighting the project through the various development review panels. 

Originally, I thought you were talking about City of Heroes... 

[HarvesterOfEyes]

Originally, I thought you were talking about City of Heroes... 

I always shake my head when people argue the "NCSoft will do what logically makes business sense" angle.

[Little Green Frog]

I always shake my head when people argue the "NCSoft will do what logically makes business sense" angle.

Why? Decision making involves a lot of factors of which the general public is rarely aware. That is why certain outcomes may appear random, but they seldom are.

[HarvesterOfEyes]

Why? Decision making involves a lot of factors of which the general public is rarely aware. That is why certain outcomes may appear random, but they seldom are.

Because to do so requires a number of suppositions not supported by evidence.

It does not make business sense to shut down a profiting enterprise, yet the evidence we actually have says NCSoft did just that.

It does not make business sense to shut down a property and sit on the IP while it still has value, yet the evidence we actually have says that's what they intended to do. This is the hardest one to run away from. The CoH IP is not going to increase in time. No one's going to make a movie out of it. There won't be another comic book series from it, and if NCSoft ever thought they were going to profit from developing a CoH 2, they've just destroyed that opportunity.

Destroying opportunities to expand the profitability of existing IP does not make business sense, yet the evidence we have says that NCSoft did just that.

So to now argue from a premise that NCSoft will, in the near future do what logically makes business sense requires you to suppose that they are imminently going to start behaving differently. You can suppose that if you like, but please at least own the fact that you are making an unsupported supposition.

There are a lot of pieces of the puzzle we don't have. Perhaps when we have the rest of it their decisions will make more sense.

You are among the posters here who demand high standards of evidence from others. Don't then argue from your own suppositions without owning them.

[Little Green Frog]

Well, you make some unfounded assumptions in your post, one of them being that I am arguing something that I am not. However, I do strongly agree with the following part:

There are a lot of pieces of the puzzle we don't have. Perhaps when we have the rest of it their decisions will make more sense.

So I'll just QFT.