Author Topic: NCSoft Stockwatch  (Read 714524 times)

TimtheEnchanter

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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #720 on: December 09, 2012, 04:57:55 AM »
If you intend to market to the US, the UK and Europe, you ignore the Aging of the West to your peril.  As the West ages, and people discover the sort of setup that my father in law and I have, I would expect PC Games to get more, not less, popular.

I still have the reflexes and the dexterity for consoles and portables (though probably won't for much longer), but consoles bore me now. Even when I compare it to the games I used to play at that child, they feel dumbed down. Even simple side-scrollers that don't need a plot more than 2 paragraphs long, are nowhere near as challenging. Just like traditional entertainment media now, everything seems to be targeting the K-8 crowd, treating anyone older than that as an afterthought.

NecrotechMaster

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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #721 on: December 09, 2012, 05:49:57 AM »
i dont do consoles much anymore because they are just so damned expensive when compared to PC gaming

consoles require: TV (anywhere from $100-3000), console and accessories (~$400 +/- 100), games (~$60 +/- 10 each), and the required need to upgrade when a new console comes out to play new games (usually new system out every 2-3 years)

a PC requires: 1 upgrade ~5 +/- 2 years to keep up with the current games (or if parts die) which runs ~$1500-2000 for high end components (assuming brand new full upgrade, individual parts vary and can be less), can play pretty much any game regardless of generation so your games dont become "obsolete" after 2 generations, and can get games MUCH cheaper (IE through steam very easy to buy most games <$20 with how often they do sales, even on new $60 games)


then when you get to the portability issue, a laptop can run the same computer games you play at home, while your console is chained to your TV and thus required a different system rebuying the same games, or getting different games for about the same price as the regular console.


i havent touched a console is close to 2 years now because its just so much more convenient and cheaper to play on PC

Victoria Victrix

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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #722 on: December 09, 2012, 05:57:29 AM »
I'm not seeing any damage control efforts from NCSoft. We're hitting them with everything we have, and there's no opposition.

Are we beneath their notice? Their declining stock belies that. Several times our efforts have immediately preceeded a tumble.

Perhaps they're not answering because what we're saying is true, and answering would only draw more attention.

But then, they would mount a media compaign touting them and their recent efforts, trying to outshout us, especially before Christmas.

It feels like they're turtle-ing, trying to hide behind language barriers until this blows over. I wish we had more ears and voices in Korea.

What's their next move?

Well there are a number of answers to that, and without having an insider on the ground in NCSoft Seoul, we are not going to know.

It could very well be that we are considered to unimportant to bother with.  That could be because we are Western and a fraction of their market.  Or, because we really are NOT affecting the stock plunge that much (there are a number of factors affecting it at the moment, although I think the fact that it dropped 12,500 won after the article in the Korean Times has a good 60% chance of being a solid hit on our part).   Or, because we are insignificant because we are (or were) mere customers, and our job is to sit down, shut up, and take what we are given.

It could be because they are still following the H & K strategy of hiding in the bunker.  It's one they are comfortable with, as a culture.  Hide from something long enough, it will get tired and go away. 

It also could be because (WARNING!  DONNING TIN FOIL HAT!) what we have here is a war invisible to us going on between Nexon and NCSoft, in which Nexon is attempting to gobble up its nearest competitor.  I do have some interesting facts.  Speculations I will put in [] brackets.

Taek Jin Kim divorced his first wife recently [early this year?].  He had to give her half of his 60% share of NCSoft as part of the settlement. [we don't know what happened to that 30% of NCSoft stock]

He then married his second wife, who is a former Nexon executive.

He then sold half of his remaining stock to Nexon.  [rumor has it he would like to sell the rest]

Second wife is put in charge of NCSoft West.

Guild Wars sells 2 million copies, although they were expecting it to sell 6 million, based on the number of sold copies of GW1.  One reason it only sold two million is because they shut off sales, claiming they weren't ready to handle that many all at once, thus chopping off a lot of impulse purchases.  [WTF? you boast that you EXPECT to sell 6 million copies and you aren't ready to handle that number when you go on sale??]

NCSoft West unilaterally murders CoH.

[Now, if I were going to try to take over a company, the easiest way is through the bedroom, not the boardroom.  CoH would just be collateral damage in a greater war.  Distract the CEO.  Give bad advice.  Drive stock prices down, buy the stock when it bottoms out through proxies until you have the majority share, then come in and fire everyone that isn't one of your stooges.]
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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #723 on: December 09, 2012, 06:34:10 AM »
I feel like I need to bathe after merely reading that! Fascinating speculation.

Anyway, my best guess: NCSoft's winding up for some sort of counterpunch. Not directly at us, mind. I anticipate some PR blitz in Korea to shore up their stock hits and negate our efforts. And our campaign's hamstrung so long as we don't have Korean speakers working with us. They're anathema here... but we need to hit 'em there.

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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #724 on: December 09, 2012, 07:29:48 AM »
Well there are a number of answers to that, and without having an insider on the ground in NCSoft Seoul, we are not going to know.

It could very well be that we are considered to unimportant to bother with.  That could be because we are Western and a fraction of their market.  Or, because we really are NOT affecting the stock plunge that much (there are a number of factors affecting it at the moment, although I think the fact that it dropped 12,500 won after the article in the Korean Times has a good 60% chance of being a solid hit on our part).   Or, because we are insignificant because we are (or were) mere customers, and our job is to sit down, shut up, and take what we are given.

It could be because they are still following the H & K strategy of hiding in the bunker.  It's one they are comfortable with, as a culture.  Hide from something long enough, it will get tired and go away. 

It also could be because (WARNING!  DONNING TIN FOIL HAT!) what we have here is a war invisible to us going on between Nexon and NCSoft, in which Nexon is attempting to gobble up its nearest competitor.  I do have some interesting facts.  Speculations I will put in [] brackets.

Taek Jin Kim divorced his first wife recently [early this year?].  He had to give her half of his 60% share of NCSoft as part of the settlement. [we don't know what happened to that 30% of NCSoft stock]

He then married his second wife, who is a former Nexon executive.

He then sold half of his remaining stock to Nexon.  [rumor has it he would like to sell the rest]

Second wife is put in charge of NCSoft West.

Guild Wars sells 2 million copies, although they were expecting it to sell 6 million, based on the number of sold copies of GW1.  One reason it only sold two million is because they shut off sales, claiming they weren't ready to handle that many all at once, thus chopping off a lot of impulse purchases.  [WTF? you boast that you EXPECT to sell 6 million copies and you aren't ready to handle that number when you go on sale??]

NCSoft West unilaterally murders CoH.

[Now, if I were going to try to take over a company, the easiest way is through the bedroom, not the boardroom.  CoH would just be collateral damage in a greater war.  Distract the CEO.  Give bad advice.  Drive stock prices down, buy the stock when it bottoms out through proxies until you have the majority share, then come in and fire everyone that isn't one of your stooges.]
I agree, I think the article in The Korea Times made the average person in Korea aware of what NCSoft did and on face value, shutting down a game that was making money, seems odd for a company whose 2nd quarter was in the red for the first time in years.  Bad press from a widely read local source (as oppose to US/EU MMO gaming websites) about a game that was not really known about in their gaming press sort of added fuel to the sell off which had died down for a while.

As for GW2 sales.  Well GW1 sold 7 million boxes over all four expansions.  A person buying the original game and each expansion separately counts as 4 boxes where their last box edition which contained all four counts only as one.  So it's kind of tough to extrapolate how many GW1 fans were just waiting to hop into GW2.  Plus as far as I can tell it hasn't been released in Asia, or at the very least their servers are completely segregated from the American and European servers because that's all I can see when I log in to GW2.  NCSoft's IR slideshow of Aug 2012 states that the Asia launch would take place in approximately 12 months after the US/EU launch (page/slide 17).

Now supposedly ArenaNet has five years worth of expansions outlined and I'm not sure if they are going to do paid expansions or not.  Right now the world consists of a single continent so there is always new frontiers over the horizon without the need of major global disaster to change the face of the planet or opening up rifts to other worlds.
« Last Edit: December 09, 2012, 07:35:00 AM by FatherXmas »
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Kosmos

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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #725 on: December 09, 2012, 07:32:53 AM »
Well there are a number of answers to that, and without having an insider on the ground in NCSoft Seoul, we are not going to know.

It could very well be that we are considered to unimportant to bother with.  That could be because we are Western and a fraction of their market.  Or, because we really are NOT affecting the stock plunge that much (there are a number of factors affecting it at the moment, although I think the fact that it dropped 12,500 won after the article in the Korean Times has a good 60% chance of being a solid hit on our part).   Or, because we are insignificant because we are (or were) mere customers, and our job is to sit down, shut up, and take what we are given.

It could be because they are still following the H & K strategy of hiding in the bunker.  It's one they are comfortable with, as a culture.  Hide from something long enough, it will get tired and go away.

It also could be because (WARNING!  DONNING TIN FOIL HAT!) what we have here is a war invisible to us going on between Nexon and NCSoft, in which Nexon is attempting to gobble up its nearest competitor.  I do have some interesting facts.  Speculations I will put in [] brackets.

Taek Jin Kim divorced his first wife recently [early this year?].  He had to give her half of his 60% share of NCSoft as part of the settlement. [we don't know what happened to that 30% of NCSoft stock]

He then married his second wife, who is a former Nexon executive.

He then sold half of his remaining stock to Nexon.  [rumor has it he would like to sell the rest]

Second wife is put in charge of NCSoft West.

Guild Wars sells 2 million copies, although they were expecting it to sell 6 million, based on the number of sold copies of GW1.  One reason it only sold two million is because they shut off sales, claiming they weren't ready to handle that many all at once, thus chopping off a lot of impulse purchases.  [WTF? you boast that you EXPECT to sell 6 million copies and you aren't ready to handle that number when you go on sale??]

NCSoft West unilaterally murders CoH.

[Now, if I were going to try to take over a company, the easiest way is through the bedroom, not the boardroom.  CoH would just be collateral damage in a greater war.  Distract the CEO.  Give bad advice.  Drive stock prices down, buy the stock when it bottoms out through proxies until you have the majority share, then come in and fire everyone that isn't one of your stooges.]

I think you need to check the integrity of your conductive cranial prophylactic. Some bad info is getting in. Did you remember to cover the ears completely and make sure it comes all the way down to the base of the skull in the back? I find mine gets leaky if I don't.

To the best of my knowledge and ability to quickly check on the 'Net...

  • Kim and his first wife were divorced before May 26, 2005, when it was reported by Yonhap that Chung Eui-jeong received a 3.84% share in NCsoftcore, leaving Kim with ownership of 27.72% of the stock at that time. This is pretty firm info.
  • When Kim sold that 14.7% to Nexon it was also reported that left him with just 9.9% remaining. That latter piece of info came from an article that may interest some here: Mysterious marriage of two Korean game dinosaurs. This is also pretty firm. (It was the stock info and that article that started me on making this response - the rest came up while checking my facts.)
  • Kim's second wife is Song-yee Yoon. She is currently listed as the Chief Strategy Officer for NCsoftcore and has held that position since Nov 4, 2008. She previously worked for SK Telecom. She's considered something of a celebrity wunderkind in South Korea; being pretty and having received her PhD from MIT at 24. Apparently she's been involved with Kim since before he divorced his first wife. They were reported secretly married in 2007. (I didn't know any of that last part, but did know she was considered a celeb geek.) It's possible she's changed jobs within NCsoftcore, but I doubt it would get past the Korean press, since she's something of a media darling there.
  • I can't find anything on a change in NCsoftcore West CEO since Jaeho Lee took over on May 14, 2009. NCsoftcore isn't really forthcoming on that sort of thing though. I still doubt the gaming press would have missed a change.
« Last Edit: December 09, 2012, 07:46:51 AM by Kosmos »

Beltor

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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #726 on: December 09, 2012, 08:17:56 AM »
It sounds like a merger was planned between Nexxon and NCSoft that may change into a takeover. COH was just caught in the crossfire.

Victoria Victrix

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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #727 on: December 09, 2012, 12:11:00 PM »
Kosmos, it was Brian Clayton who told me that Song-yee Yoon was the CEO of NCSoftcore West; I'm going to assume that since he was reporting to her, he knows what he is talking about.

At the moment, I cannot remember where the information that she was once a Nexon Exec came from, but it was in an article in the gaming press, and no one corrected it.

The information that he had split a 60% share with the ex was extrapolation from an article that said he had to "split" his share with his ex-wife.  I assumed (incorrectly, obviously) that since he had 30% he must have originally held 60%.  "Split" to me implies "divided in half."

I would love to know where in that timeline Yoon was promoted to CEO of NCSoftcore West--before, or after selling the stock to Nexon?

I did warn you it was a tin-foil-hat conspiracy theory.  This is what happens when you give a writer very little data to go on.
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DrakeGrimm

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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #728 on: December 09, 2012, 12:42:55 PM »
Kosmos, it was Brian Clayton who told me that Song-yee Yoon was the CEO of NCSoftcore West; I'm going to assume that since he was reporting to her, he knows what he is talking about.

At the moment, I cannot remember where the information that she was once a Nexon Exec came from, but it was in an article in the gaming press, and no one corrected it.

The information that he had split a 60% share with the ex was extrapolation from an article that said he had to "split" his share with his ex-wife.  I assumed (incorrectly, obviously) that since he had 30% he must have originally held 60%.  "Split" to me implies "divided in half."

I would love to know where in that timeline Yoon was promoted to CEO of NCSoftcore West--before, or after selling the stock to Nexon?

I did warn you it was a tin-foil-hat conspiracy theory.  This is what happens when you give a writer very little data to go on.

Behold the trap of the writer. Give us too little data, and our brains start manufacturing their own...
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Turjan

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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #729 on: December 09, 2012, 06:35:52 PM »

Colette

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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #730 on: December 09, 2012, 07:08:43 PM »
"Lee used to work for Arthur Andersen...."

Whoa, waitasec, the same Arthur Anderson accounting firm convicted of helping Enron with their shenanigans, then went bankrupt? Dear Lord! That is one stone-cold rotten-to-the-bones woman.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Andersen

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron

That's like... the business equivalent of finding out she was a member of the Nazi party.

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Three! One to change the bulb and one to rip you off."
« Last Edit: December 09, 2012, 07:16:50 PM by Colette »

FatherXmas

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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #731 on: December 09, 2012, 08:46:00 PM »
You can't paint the entire company, Arthur Andersen, with the Enron mess.  It was a very large company with lots of branches and I'll say most of them were fully on the up and up.  Enron was a case where one group, including it's senior management, soiled the name of the entire company for all of it's 85,000 employees.
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FatherXmas

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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #732 on: December 09, 2012, 08:54:30 PM »
What I found interesting in those linked articles was this bit.

"Yoon is especially known as the "genius'' who received her Ph.D from the Massachusetts Institute of Technoloy (MIT) at the age of 24. She inspired a popular TV series ``KAIST'' starring actress Lee Na-young as an engineering progidy."

They have an 81 episode drama about;

"A situation drama on students of Korea Advanced Science and Technology. The story of love, agony and endless research of the top brains in the field of science. It also presents a role model of a free, creative youth and their professors dictating what education should be. K.A.I.S.T stands for Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology."

I take it they didn't make them out to be a bunch of socially inept misfits.
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Tubbius

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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #733 on: December 09, 2012, 09:26:49 PM »
This is getting heavy.  :o

corvus1970

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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #734 on: December 09, 2012, 09:59:12 PM »
Holy crap, I just walked into an episode of "White Collar", minus the cool-factor and the commercials.
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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #735 on: December 09, 2012, 10:22:55 PM »
Lots of valid theories here, but there is one more possibility that I haven't seen anyone mention...Is it possible that there is some dirty laundry in the CoX reported financials?

While we all loved the game, do we really know for certain that it was in fact making money and not some fancy financial account involved?

I mean, NCSofts behavior  as it relates to the CoX decisions, is exactly in line with the behavior of a company that is trying to cover up something.

Like everyone else, I'm still trying to make sense of this.

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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #736 on: December 09, 2012, 10:25:28 PM »
Dear Lord! That is one stone-cold rotten-to-the-bones woman.

He's a bloke, this Lee Jae-ho. Here's the photo from the article :-



I didn't know about the Enron connection, Colette...most enlightening! If their Chief Financial Officer was involved in that, it might explain how so many weird figures show up in their accounting reports - and how ArenaNet doesn't in fact seem to show up at all for years. I believe that's what they called in the Enron incident : "creative accounting" ;)

Colette

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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #737 on: December 09, 2012, 10:45:56 PM »
Whoops, yeah! Got the two confused. Need a playbook.

"You can't paint the entire company, Arthur Andersen, with the Enron mess."

Guilt by association fallacy, I know. Quite correct. Still...

"If their Chief Financial Officer was involved in that, it might explain how so many weird figures show up in their accounting reports..."

First I've heard of that. Let's keep the possibility of financial shenanigans in mind without leaping to unfounded conclusions.

Kosmos

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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #738 on: December 09, 2012, 10:54:00 PM »
Kosmos, it was Brian Clayton who told me that Song-yee Yoon was the CEO of NCSoftcore West; I'm going to assume that since he was reporting to her, he knows what he is talking about.

I had assumed you had inside info and I was mainly looking for when she took over the CEO role at NCsoftcore West and couldn't find anything at all about it. Since Lee was NCsoftcore CFO and NCSW CEO at the same time, I wouldn't be surprised if they just moved the latter title from Lee to Yoon without an announcement. I think it more likely that she was simply in the chain-of-command as CSO between Clayton and Lee after they did away with a discrete NCSW CEO and started running the show from Korea.

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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #739 on: December 09, 2012, 11:37:44 PM »
He's a bloke, this Lee Jae-ho. Here's the photo from the article :-



I didn't know about the Enron connection, Colette...most enlightening! If their Chief Financial Officer was involved in that, it might explain how so many weird figures show up in their accounting reports - and how ArenaNet doesn't in fact seem to show up at all for years. I believe that's what they called in the Enron incident : "creative accounting" ;)
The only Enron connection was that he once worked for Arthur Anderson and there was a cover up at Arthur Anderson about Enron.  Arthur Anderson was a world wide accounting agency with 85,000 employees.  Unless Colette has something that ties him to Enron, it's simple guilt by association.  It would be equivalent to blaming a chemical engineer working for Dow Chemical in the US for the Bhopal Tragedy.

Edit: Okay, how did I double post this?  What was I thinking?  Sorry Colette, didn't mean to pile on.
« Last Edit: December 10, 2012, 08:20:43 PM by FatherXmas »
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