NCSoft Share in freefall since Dec 2012

[Millan85]

I find this hilarious, these guys have the commercial knowledge of a knat !!!!

According to a few friends who work on the stock market NCSoft shares plummeted after they shut down City of Heroes and haven't looked like recovering since.

Game Producers across the world take head : Screw with our games and the public will screw you...

I can see NCSoft doing a come back just to try and rescue there now ailing image as a leading MMO provider, given that it is widely acknowledge CoH/CoV was the market leader in it's particular MMO Genre. (DC and UO don't event come close in term of game satisfaction)

[The Fifth Horseman]

Incorrect. It's been declining since September, with a major drop in mid-November and a low point in February (their current 52-week low). Since February, it has been climbing up again.

Overall though, they were going down since July 2011.

http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/chart?symbol=036570.KS

[houtex]

Also, "gnat".  Unless, instead of the insect, you meant the shrub, in which case has less intelligence than the insect, supposedly, or the television station in Alberquerque, NM, USA, NA, W.Hemisphere, Earth, Sol system, Sagittarius Arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo Cluster, other classifications of groups, The Universe, which I'm not sure would qualify for intelligence, due to it being a company, and not a living thing.

But I'm guessing you meant the insect. :)

[Aggelakis]

Overall though, they were going down since July 2011.

http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/chart?symbol=036570.KS

It's more like "since October 2011" (July/Aug/Sep saw multiple increases - the decline started mid/late October), but yes. They had only one direction to go: they were already VASTLY overvalued for what their company was actually producing.

[Millan85]

The bottom line though is CoH was easily the flagship product in western markets, and superior to it's rivals in the same category. A major upgrade would have bought it into the new generation of games. However I now play GW2 and I must say CoH never felt that inferior even to what is essentially a brand new game.

[Shenku]

The bottom line though is CoH was easily the flagship product in western markets, and superior to it's rivals in the same category. A major upgrade would have bought it into the new generation of games. However I now play GW2 and I must say CoH never felt that inferior even to what is essentially a brand new game.

That's because the developers for CoH focused largely on gameplay and content, and not just pouring all their money into sexy graphics, useless loot to equip until you earned more useless loot, and half nekid women to lure in prepubescent teenagers who wouldn't know a good game if it slapped them in the face...

[Aggelakis]

The bottom line though is CoH was easily the flagship product in western markets, and superior to it's rivals in the same category. A major upgrade would have bought it into the new generation of games. However I now play GW2 and I must say CoH never felt that inferior even to what is essentially a brand new game.

As far as western markets, Guild Wars equaled to outperformed CoH and it wasn't even a subscription game. :/ For its first year, Aion blew CoH out of the water - to the point that that year outshone most of the whole eight year run of CoH, and it's still open to continue earning (albeit at a lower rate now).

I wouldn't call CoH its flagship product in the west. It doesn't really have one.

[Heroette]

That's because the developers for CoH focused largely on gameplay and content, and not just pouring all their money into sexy graphics, useless loot to equip until you earned more useless loot, and half nekid women to lure in prepubescent teenagers who wouldn't know a good game if it slapped them in the face...

First I want to state that I loved and still love COH but GW2 is not full of half naked women.  I think you are thinking of Blade and Soul.  GW2 has great graphics and looking back at COH, if a COH2 could have been developed, I can see it surpassing GW2 in graphics but as it was, it was dated.  Just saying.

[FatherXmas]

I hadn't done this before.  Lets look at NC Interactive and NC Europe's Income over the years.  Figures are in million of KrW.

If you believe them!  :o

Important Dates
Lineage - NA Launch 7/01, NA Closure 6/11
CoH - NA Launch 4/04, EU Launch 2/05, NA/EU Closure 11/12
Lineage II - NA Launch 5/04, EU Launch 11/04
Guild Wars - NA/EU Launch 4/05
Auto Assault - NA/EU Launch 4/06, NA/EU Closure 8/07
Tabula Rasa - NA/EU Launch 11/07, NA/EU Closure 2/09
Aion - NA/EU Launch 9/09
Guild Wars 2 - NA/EU Launch 8/12

NC Interactive
2004 - 45,955 - CoH + Lineage II Launch
2005 - 69,577 - Guild Wars Launch
2006 - 62,013 - Auto Assault Launch
2007 - 55,562 - AA closes, Tabula Rasa Launch
2008 - 45,130 
2009 - 70,254 - TR closes, Aion Launch
2010 - 48,952
2011 - 27,472 - Lineage Closes
2012 - 112,740 - CoH Closes, Guild Wars 2 Launch

NC Europe
2004 - 0 - Lineage II Launch
2005 - 17,914 - CoH + Guild Wars Launch
2006 - 30,081 - Auto Assault Launch
2007 - 27,506 - AA closes, Tabula Rasa Launch
2008 - 22,456
2009 - 47,997 - TR Closes, Aion Launch
2010 - 34,275
2011 - 17,928
2012 - 76,102 - CoH Closes, Guild Wars 2 Launch

As far as I can tell Lineage never launched in Europe.  It doesn't mean they didn't play it on a different regional server, such a NA.

CoH in Europe is interesting because they didn't get their own servers until a year after the EU game was available.  If you remember the whole EU vs NA code fiasco.

-------------------------

For those who were asking, ArenaNet's Income.

ArenaNet
2004 - 0
2005 - 10,609 - Guild Wars NA/EU/Korea Launch
2006 - 12,708 - Guild Wars Japan/Taiwan Launch
2007 - 12,020
2008 - 8,131
2009 - 4,978
2010 - 3,625
2011 - 2,327
2012 - 67,953 - Guild Wars 2 NA/EU Launch

Now according to NCSOFT's native site, Guild Wars was available not only NA, EU, Korea, Japan and Taiwan but also in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Argentina, Brazil and Chile.

[Codewalker]

Wait, I thought ArenaNet wasn't part of NC Interactive and was accounted for separately?

/confused

[FatherXmas]

Well looking at the last quarter numbers, and I'm guessing here, it looks as if NC Interactive and NC Europe gets a cut of the box sales as publisher/distributor for GW2 sold in their region while ArenaNet gets item shop, digital sales and developer's cut of the box sales.

Let me add the ArenaNet numbers to my previous post.

[Ashen Fury]

Well looking at the last quarter numbers, and I'm guessing here, it looks as if NC Interactive and NC Europe gets a cut of the box sales as publisher/distributor for GW2 sold in their region while ArenaNet gets item shop, digital sales and developer's cut of the box sales.

Let me add the ArenaNet numbers to my previous post.

Does this mean that NCsoft takes a smaller cut of the digital sales of the game? Cause if so, then i'm glad I grabbed it online while it was on sale.

[FatherXmas]

In the end, NCSOFT gets all of it.  ArenaNet, NC Interactive and NC Europe are 100% owned by NCSOFT.

Buying the download, if I'm right in my assumptions, will only make ArenaNet look better in their master's eyes.

[Shenku]

First I want to state that I loved and still love COH but GW2 is not full of half naked women.  I think you are thinking of Blade and Soul.  GW2 has great graphics and looking back at COH, if a COH2 could have been developed, I can see it surpassing GW2 in graphics but as it was, it was dated.  Just saying.

I was refering to a lot of MMOs and games in general, not strictly just the ones NCSoft has. For example, I was trying out Tera recently, and 95% of the "armor" I've seen so far for women fails to actually provide any sort of plausible protection. This isn't just an MMO problem, but a game art style problem. Mostly, as they say, Sex sells...

In general though, too many games focus specifically on graphics(not just near-nudity), and as a result gameplay is underwhelming. Look at games 20 years ago versus today. They were fun back then, and many are still fun today, so why do today's games play so terrible in comparison? Point in fact, I will likely never own a Playstation 3 because when ever I talk to anyone about any of the games for it, all they want to talk about is "how awesome the graphics are", and rarely mention anything about how the games themselves actually play... This is true even when the topic comes up at Gamestop too, the employees don't seem to know how to sell the PS3 on anything but its graphics, and thus a problem with the gaming industry as a whole.

Indie developers have figured it out, i.e. Angry Birds, Minecraft, exc., so why can't the bigger developers catch on to this?

This is all going way off topic though, and semi-becoming a rant about the game industry's current direction, so for that I apologize...

Move along, nothing to see here...

[FatherXmas]

Well since we are derailing ... I agree with you.  The push for better graphics, stylized or photorealistic, simply means that a greater percentage of employees are simply 3D model makers and painters because phone booths, light poles and trash don't model themselves.  And every 3D world is full of these assets.  Sure certain objects can be auto generated.  There's at least one "tree" add-on I know of out there to help tree and forest generation.  There's been techniques around for decades now to generate realistic outdoor terrain.  SIGGRAPH had loads of papers presented every year discussing such natural modeling.

I digress.  The actual gameplay has become secondary in game development way to often.  Look at Crysis 3 or the new Tomb Raider.  Hmmmm ... pores in skin and realistic hair modeling.  And just how does that make the game interesting to play?

You've all probably seen this picture

https://images.weserv.nl/?url=cdn.duelinganalogs.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2010%2F11%2Ffps-map-design.png

And sadly it true way to often.  But the scenery along that rail is gorgeous and the engine generated cut scenes are to die for.

[JaguarX]

You've all probably seen this picture

https://images.weserv.nl/?url=cdn.duelinganalogs.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2010%2F11%2Ffps-map-design.png

And sadly it true way to often.  But the scenery along that rail is gorgeous and the engine generated cut scenes are to die for.

The pic on the left looks like one of those old Doom maps.

The pic on the right looks like the average new FPS these days.

Many games these days 2010-up, beautiful to look at, boring to play.
Old games-meh not much to look at but fun as heck.


Now to combine the best of both worlds for once

[TimtheEnchanter]

Gosh, I should see if I can get the Doom Editing Utility working on my PC, just for a little trippy time-travel.

That's what I thought too... Doom map.

I hadn't seen that picture before though. I Lol'ed.

[TimtheEnchanter]

There's at least on "tree" add-on I know of out there to help tree and forest generation.  There's been techniques around for decades now to generate realistic outdoor terrain.  SIGGRAPH had loads of papers presented every year discussing such natural modeling.

It will get better one of these days I think.We'll reach a point where assets are so common that real world objects don't even need to be remodeled anymore.

And we will also probably eventually teach computers how to decorate a building for us just as easily as it can put trees and grass on a landscape. We can just build the basic layout and then an algorithm will choose the best places to put plants, furniture, light fixtures, etc.

[Tenzhi]

I digress.  The actual gameplay has become secondary in game development way to often.  Look at Crysis 3 or the new Tomb Raider.  Hmmmm ... pores in skin and realistic hair modeling.  And just how does that make the game interesting to play?

I don't know jack about Crysis, but what I played of the early Tomb Raider games made me hate them.  The graphics weren't interesting and (more importantly) the control was atrocious.  The new game is the only one of the series I've enjoyed, and it wasn't because of realistic hair models (which weren't nearly as realistic on the 360) but rather because the gameplay wasn't an ongoing battle against bad controls, and it happened to be punctuated by some cinematic moments which amused me (even when they were extraordinarily cliche).

[General Idiot]

The pic on the left looks like one of those old Doom maps.

It is in fact E1M6 (Central Processing) from the first Doom. :p