NCSoft Stockwatch

[FatherXmas]

...and from that I suspect people infer the existence of a shell-game.

Why?  Apple doesn't release it's profits on each of the products, even the broader category of product lines like iPad or Mac.  Nexon doesn't even release sales numbers for their games, neither does Activision/Blizzard.  Few if any companies make a distinction of sales by product line and never profits.

A/B splits sales between Activision and Blizzard; or Retail and Online; or Online, HD Consoles, SD Consoles/Handhelds, PC and other; and of course regional, NA/EU/Asia.

I'm surprised that NCsoft actually has that level of transparency in sales but it makes sense since they have such a limited number of products to sell that got added to slowly over time.

[HarvesterOfEyes]

Why? 

I would suggest probably because of the inconsistent statements about various topics including the profitability of one enterprise versus another and what precisely were the reasons for shutting down the one most posters to this forum give a tinker's damn about.

A rational person suspects a liar of lying.

[FatherXmas]

I would suggest probably because of the inconsistent statements about various topics including the profitability of one enterprise versus another and what precisely were the reasons for shutting down the one most posters to this forum give a tinker's damn about.

A rational person suspects a liar of lying.

The statements weren't inconsistent in my eye.  They simply were hesitant to say the reason until most of the former employees of the Paragon were resituated.  And NCsoft did reorganize their western subsidiaries.  They reduced staff at NC Interactive after the game's closure as well as discontinue several small, old casual games in Korea.  They are focusing on big name (read sales) MMOs, mobile gaming and expansion of new MMOs into untapped markets.

In their eyes Paragon had nothing new to offer and CoH simply wasn't large enough and didn't have the potential to be expanded into Asia to keep even a pared down Paragon.  At least that is what they were implying.

[DarkCurrent]

The statements weren't inconsistent in my eye.  They simply were hesitant to say the reason until most of the former employees of the Paragon were resituated.  And NCsoft did reorganize their western subsidiaries.  They reduced staff at NC Interactive after the game's closure as well as discontinue several small, old casual games in Korea.  They are focusing on big name (read sales) MMOs, mobile gaming and expansion of new MMOs into untapped markets.

In their eyes Paragon had nothing new to offer and CoH simply wasn't large enough and didn't have the potential to be expanded into Asia to keep even a pared down Paragon.  At least that is what they were implying.

Hmmm... and here I just thought they were pissing in my eye socket.

[TonyV]

Yes, but ArenaNet was working on GW2.  Why shut down GW1 since at the very least it's advertising for GW2 and you don't tick off potential customers for it's sequel.

Yes, but Paragon Studios could have been working on CoH2 if NCsoft had given it the green light.  Incidentally, it could have been more successful if NCsoft had thrown just a modicum of marketing dollars at it.  Why have one successful game when you could have had two?  Why shut down either game and piss off a community, a move that would undoubtedly have ramifications on your other business?  Again, City of Heroes was not losing money.  I'm not saying that it was a bad decision not to shut down Guild Wars or develop Guild Wars 2.  I am saying, however, that it was a bad decision to not develop City of Heroes 2, and it was a completely numskull decision to shut down City of Heroes and kill off Paragon Studios.  And then to follow that with not allowing the management of Paragon Studios to at least buy the IP so that you could milk a few dollars off of the husk of what you're throwing away is truly a move that only a frontal lobotomy could produce.

[Kistulot]

Yes, but Paragon Studios could have been working on CoH2 if NCsoft had given it the green light.  Incidentally, it could have been more successful if NCsoft had thrown just a modicum of marketing dollars at it.  Why have one successful game when you could have had two?  Why shut down either game and piss off a community, a move that would undoubtedly have ramifications on your other business?

Supposedly they WERE working on another game, but now, we'll never know what it was.

Honestly if it wasn't CoH2 (and they said it wasn't) I wouldn't have been interested in all likelyhood, but who knows.

[NecrotechMaster]

Supposedly they WERE working on another game, but now, we'll never know what it was.

Honestly if it wasn't CoH2 (and they said it wasn't) I wouldn't have been interested in all likelyhood, but who knows.

based on what was said about it, it wasnt coh2

iirc i think it was mentioned by one of the devs either right around closing or after closing that it was soemthing that was similar to minecraft or something, like really left field for what we would think

[DarkCurrent]

Stock price is creeping back up after those fluff news releases yesterday about their Q4 successes.

[Colette]

Definite, but negligible. They're still in the 135 range.

[FatherXmas]

Stock price is creeping back up after those fluff news releases yesterday about their Q4 successes.

It drifted back up because after a two day decline of 6.9%, those who were getting out or rebalancing their portfolios were done.  You have to understand that stocks go down because there are more shares for sale than interest to buy, so the price is reduced until enough buyers step in.  Opposite is true when a stock goes up, there are more interest in shares to buy than actual shares for sale, so the price is increased until enough shares are up for sale.

What is revealing is the volume of shares traded.  The week before the average volume of shares trades was about 300K.  On Tuesday, the first day of the sell off, volume was 728K.  On Wednesday the volume was 970K.  When it opened higher and meandered on Thursday the volume was only 261K and today when it climbed a little bit it was 403K.  So nearly 1.7 million shares traded when the stock declined 6.9% and about 40% of that volume when it climbed.  And this pattern of higher volume days when the stock declined vs low volume days when the stock rises has been going at least for the last year.

Also looking at the last week changes in estimates from analysts, consensus sales estimates for 2013 is down 6.8% with earnings estimates for 2013 down 19.8%.  However compared to a year ago, the sales estimates for 2013 were off by 24% with earnings estimates off by whopping 50%.  Basket.  Eggs.  Blade & Soul. 

B&S was no Aion.  And how many years of hype imploded taking the stock price with it.

[FatherXmas]

Yes, but Paragon Studios could have been working on CoH2 if NCsoft had given it the green light.  Incidentally, it could have been more successful if NCsoft had thrown just a modicum of marketing dollars at it.  Why have one successful game when you could have had two?  Why shut down either game and piss off a community, a move that would undoubtedly have ramifications on your other business?  Again, City of Heroes was not losing money.  I'm not saying that it was a bad decision not to shut down Guild Wars or develop Guild Wars 2.  I am saying, however, that it was a bad decision to not develop City of Heroes 2, and it was a completely numskull decision to shut down City of Heroes and kill off Paragon Studios.  And then to follow that with not allowing the management of Paragon Studios to at least buy the IP so that you could milk a few dollars off of the husk of what you're throwing away is truly a move that only a frontal lobotomy could produce.

Timing is everything.

Guild Wars came out in NA almost exactly a year after CoH.  By the end of 2006 it had more cumulative sales than CoH with CoH having a year head start.  By then they had two expansions out and the game was available in numerous Asian countries including Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore.  They were having international PvP tournaments.  Three months later ArenaNet announces both the next expansion AND Guild Wars 2.  So they got their go ahead on development when they were on top with one more expansion to bank so by the end of 2007, Guild Wars had 21,700 million KrW more in cumulative sales than CoH.

Once the last expansion for Guild Wars was released, nearly the entire development staff except for literally a handful, were shifted to Guild Wars 2 development.

Now Paragon Studio wasn't created until the end of 2007.  By then the Korean beta of City of Hero was dead by nearly a year and there was no further attempt to bring it to anywhere else in Asia.

Now I'm not sure when Paragon Studio pitched MMO ideas to NCsoft and got at least one approved to ramp up or shift staff to it.  I'm guessing after GR which by then CoH sales were already settling at only $2.5-3 million a quarter.

ArenaNet had the advantage of not needing to crank out significant content two to three times a year.  This let them move most of the development team over to a new project, one they got the OK for when they were flying high in sales with proof that their game design could succeed in Asia. 

Also this was before the debacle that was Tabula Rasa.  It's likely that the bar of what they would accept as a "good idea" for an MMO was now set higher than it was when GW2 got the green light or they became much more conservative about play style, looks, etc.

And Carbine Studio was founded in 2005 and bought by NCsoft in 2007 (as best as I can tell), again before Tabula Rasa went down in flames.

[TonyV]

I'm not talking about the "Secret Project". What I'm referring to is that Paragon Studios pitched CoH 2 multiple times to NCsoft, and they were turned down. Meanwhile, NCsoft gave them practically nothing in the way of marketing dollars. If NCsoft didn't like CoH's sales numbers, it's their own damn fault. There's no reason CoH couldn't have been just as or even more popular than Guild Wars, especially given the popularity of superheroes in the media these days. And I would strongly disagree with any assertion that CoH was any less deserving of a sequel than Guild Wars.

[Copper Cockroach]

Guild Wars, are you kiddin'? I've always said CoH would've been bigger than World of Freaking Warcraft if it had been promoted properly.

"The Avengers" is the 3rd highest-grossing movie of all time. Most of the other recent superhero movies have been huge smashes as well. Now imagine if all those filmgoers had known there was a game that let them do all that same stuff, but with their own characters...

Good job, NCsoft. Geniuses.

[Peregrine Falcon]

I'm not talking about the "Secret Project". What I'm referring to is that Paragon Studios pitched CoH 2 multiple times to NCsoft, and they were turned down. Meanwhile, NCsoft gave them practically nothing in the way of marketing dollars. If NCsoft didn't like CoH's sales numbers, it's their own damn fault. There's no reason CoH couldn't have been just as or even more popular than Guild Wars, especially given the popularity of superheroes in the media these days. And I would strongly disagree with any assertion that CoH was any less deserving of a sequel than Guild Wars.

I remember when Heroes was big on TV and people started begging NCSoft to just advertise City of Heroes. Anyone remember what happened?

Ex_Libris started a thread about how she had started a new MySpace page for City of Heroes. Then both her and Lighthouse took offense when people told her that she was wasting her time with a social media site that had already died.

Hitstreak said that when the servers went down that all of City's social sites (Twitter, etc.) would be taken down too. It looks like they forgot the Myspace page. Kinda like everyone else forgot that it existed.

[FatherXmas]

I'm not talking about the "Secret Project". What I'm referring to is that Paragon Studios pitched CoH 2 multiple times to NCsoft, and they were turned down. Meanwhile, NCsoft gave them practically nothing in the way of marketing dollars. If NCsoft didn't like CoH's sales numbers, it's their own damn fault. There's no reason CoH couldn't have been just as or even more popular than Guild Wars, especially given the popularity of superheroes in the media these days. And I would strongly disagree with any assertion that CoH was any less deserving of a sequel than Guild Wars.

Again timing.  When did Paragon pitch this?  It it was after the very public and expensive failure of TR their bar for new ideas may have been set higher.  Also the failure of the Korean CoH beta may have convinced NCsoft that a CoH2 wasn't such a great idea or at the very least one that would still not be successful in Korea.

Personally, talking out of my backside here, I suspect one of the reasons that CoH failed in Korea was PvP.  Let's face it, Asia (yes I'm painting with a very broad brush here, sorry) seems to enjoy video games where you can compete against other players online.  Have a formal tournaments, ranking system, etc.  What's the most popular video game in Korea PC cafes right now?  According to this it's League of Legends by a nearly 3:1 margin.

Now our PvP at the time, late 2005/early 2006, pre IO, had very asymmetrical one on one.  Tank Vs Scrapper tended to be a draw.  Someone who could move quicker than their opponent tended to have an upper hand.  Blaster Vs Melee was a match in avoiding.  Balance was better on teams of course but even then gameplay and powers were very different between PvE and PvP.

Plus there was rooting.  I've been noticing in the various videos about MMOs that are popular in Korea and other Asian countries are a bit more FPS like with their movement and attacks.  Then there's the whole dodge/avoid/AOE hint mechanism that seems to be popping up everywhere.  Now I don't know if word got back as to why Korea CoH failed in beta and then took into consideration those faults when they pitched CoH2 or any other MMO idea.  I wouldn't be overly surprise to find out that proper feedback from Korea wasn't provided that upper management would simply expect Paragon to look around and figure it out themselves.  As a way to prove that the team was worthy of another shot.

Like I said, my opinion.

[FatherXmas]

Guild Wars, are you kiddin'? I've always said CoH would've been bigger than World of Freaking Warcraft if it had been promoted properly.

"The Avengers" is the 3rd highest-grossing movie of all time. Most of the other recent superhero movies have been huge smashes as well. Now imagine if all those filmgoers had known there was a game that let them do all that same stuff, but with their own characters...

Good job, NCsoft. Geniuses.

Other than Guild Wars 2, show me when NCsoft advertised any of their MMOs when there wasn't a box launch tied to it?  In Korea they have flippin K-pop concerts.  Heck they currently have a tie-in between Lineage and PSY (Gangnam Style).  They simply don't know how to spend ad money over here.  In Korea, they have a lot of promotions through all the PC cafes tied to their games.  Here...we buy them and take them home to play.  They are stuck with how our retail chains simply don't stock anything more than a few months old anymore.  That shelf space has been cut way back in the few stores that still carry PC games.  That you have to essentially bribe a chain to make sure your products are always prominently displayed.  The one time they did a deal with Walmart, GvE wasn't on the shelves in most of their stores the week it was in their circular.  One time shot, fail.  They did a deal with GameStop, we didn't even get a GameStop commercial out of it.  How many went to GameStop that week and their staff new nothing about Going Rogue or the deal?  Fail, strike two.

As for GW2, ArenaNet hired their own advertising company to promote the game.  They didn't wait for NCsoft to get their act together.  Now that ad company has been (or was) retained by NC Interactive just after GW2 hit the stores for all future games moving forward.

But that said DCUO isn't blowing up sales wise either.  Maybe because there were so few DC movies (however DC animated TV series were around since the mid 1990s).  Of course at some point the actual game makes a difference when it comes to word of mouth.  Advertising just puts a game on potential players radar before it's released.  Afterwards it's word of mouth and reviews that determines a sale.

[NecrotechMaster]

I remember when Heroes was big on TV and people started begging NCSoft to just advertise City of Heroes. Anyone remember what happened?

Ex_Libris started a thread about how she had started a new MySpace page for City of Heroes. Then both her and Lighthouse took offense when people told her that she was wasting her time with a social media site that had already died.

Hitstreak said that when the servers went down that all of City's social sites (Twitter, etc.) would be taken down too. It looks like they forgot the Myspace page. Kinda like everyone else forgot that it existed.

ncsoft had a coh myspace page? lol

[Blondeshell]

As another example of how NCsoft has no clue how and/or no desire to promote itself in the West on a corporate level, I just noticed that the press release section of the English version of their corporate site was last updated over three years ago for Aion's open beta, while the Korean version averages at least three items per week. 

[FatherXmas]

As another example of how NCsoft has no clue how and/or no desire to promote itself in the West on a corporate level, I just noticed that the press release section of the English version of their corporate site was last updated over three years ago for Aion's open beta, while the Korean version averages at least three items per week. 

To be honest though we have this site for all our western gaming info needs although the corporate site does keep the IR and game information up to date or at least matching the Korean version of the site, just not the press releases.

[Samuraiko]

I remember when Heroes was big on TV and people started begging NCSoft to just advertise City of Heroes. Anyone remember what happened?

Ex_Libris started a thread about how she had started a new MySpace page for City of Heroes. Then both her and Lighthouse took offense when people told her that she was wasting her time with a social media site that had already died.

Hitstreak said that when the servers went down that all of City's social sites (Twitter, etc.) would be taken down too. It looks like they forgot the Myspace page. Kinda like everyone else forgot that it existed.

However, their YouTube channel is still there, as is the TwitchTV page.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite