In my experience, people that are in panic mode fall into familiar and predicable patterns.
NCSoft's pattern seems to be trying to convince us that shutting down CoH was needed for the benefit of all humanity and to blissfully ignore the impending fall out of a horribly stupid decision to shut CoH down in the manner that they did.
I concur...but I also think that "realignment of company focus" stuff is real: they're de-emphasizing the Western market. Not all at once, and not in a way that would too-greatly compromise their considerable investment in GW2...but all the signs are there. A near-complete retreat into the safe confines of the high-fantasy genre (very nearly the only genre worth bothering with in the Asian market); a heavy push for Blade in Hole, er...Blade and Soul (high fantasy with a distinctly Asian focus in terms of its lore); shutting down a Western studio subsidiary, which is probably a precursor to a reduced presence/staff at NCSoft West...and so forth.
I very much suspect that NCSoft has realized that the Asian and Western MMO markets are profoundly different in terms of customer expectations...and that their idea of being able to develop for one and simply port to the other is a failed model. Sure, they're trying it again with B&S...but to me that smacks of a decision made a while back and simply being carried forth because the only alternative is to not release the game in the West at all. When it (inevitably) tanks over here, I expect it to be the last attempt on NCSoft's part to do this sort of thing.
In the meantime, sunsetting CoH
without selling the IP creates a very advantageous (tax-wise) loss of value for them...something to use in their EoY profit/loss accounting. I still maintain that that write-off of loss of value of the IP is more than they could possibly have secured from a potential buyer...which makes the decision a no-brainer for any competent C-level exec. I don't
like it...but it's how it works.
