Brillig
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:Except this is not the way they think. Remember that there's also the right to make a second game based on the Cryptic engine and IP. Those rights could be valueless, or they could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. NCSoft may not want to sell one without the other, as just selling the existing game could lead to interesting situations down the road (having to compete directly with the buyers, or the buyers trashing the IP so badly that a sequel tanks). NCSoft will have to take all that in consideration even if there are absolutely no plans to make a sequel.Originally Posted by GadgetDon
NCSoft would only be nuts to let that IP go right now for 500K if it believes it'll get more than 500K value from it in the future. (Adjusted for inflation). If NCSoft puts the game on the shelf and never sells, it's worthless. The future income NCSoft gets from it is zero, which makes the present value calculation really simple - zippo. Again, don't spin out any ideas of someday they'll make CoH2, or relaunch CoH, or fund a movie or whatever, it's not in their wheelhouse and even if they try they'll just throw a lot of money away.
If the highest bid they can get now is 500K, it's not going to go up as time passes. Even if, a year down the line, they call the guy who offered 500K and said "We'll take it now" and the guy hems and haws and says "OK, 500K it is" (unlikely) inflation makes that less valuable than 500K now.
And it doesn't matter if they sell the IP for 500K and within a year the guy has made millions. They're still 500K ahead and it's as most ahead as they'll get. Business is about maximizing shareholder value. If NCSoft can maximize their shareholder value by 500K in doing a deal that increases the other guy's shareholder value by ten million, NCSoft has still done a smart deal.
(And if the game is so obviously profitable that anyone could make millions by running it - why the hell did NCSoft want to shut it down. You can't have it both ways, CoH was such a failure that the smart move for NCSoft was to shut it down and deal with all the termination expenses and yet it's such a sure-fire hit for anyone that anything less than a huge offer is ridiculous.)
Because of that, if you're bidding for CoH, I suspect you're going to have to be bidding for both the existing game and the rights to the sequel. That's why $500k would never cut it. -
Quote:I'm perfectly willing to believe that he said that. I'm less willing to believe that it's the entirety of the story. For example, I'd guess that this didn't account for expense for servers, bandwidth or support, all of which were actually being paid for by different divisions of NCSoft, but were part of the cost of running CoH.Originally Posted by Chad Gulzow-Man
Believe me or not, but I had lunch with Black Pebble this weekend and he said this definitely was NOT the case. According to him, Paragon was still maintaining a profit while working on both of their non-CoH projects. (Mind you, neither were MMOs, and therefore would not, presumably, require as high a budget as CoH.)
I chose to take him at face value, but you can decide whatever you want with that information. -
Quote:And is cheering on the trolls. Color me surprised. At least he's elevating Titan's credibility.Originally Posted by Evil_Legacy
Well well the head honcho himself has arrived.
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Quote:Which, ironically, is code-named "Titan."Originally Posted by Golden Girl
That's pretty much changed now - the TORtanic is possibly the last major sub-only game, unless Blizzard take a chance with their established player base and go for a sub-only model for their next MMO.
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Quote:I bet Blade and Soul has moving hair too. I think they're probably just doing it to taunt you.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
It's owned by the Nameless Enemy.
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Quote:That's because we don't have buttery fingers. Yet.Originally Posted by Intrinsic
I think it's an important distinction if you want to buy a game studio, and are trying to determine the value of that studio. If you're having a discussion on a gaming forum? Not so much. I don't try to correct every mistake I see on the internet. Also, sometimes I just like to enjoy my popcorn.
*edit* Geez, you guys type quickly.
I just think if people are going to be enraged to the point of spending a good portion of their time vandalizing webpages, they should be enraged for the right reasons. -
Quote:GW2 has moving hair.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
I play for moving hair.
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Quote:Blaming advertising is convenient, but it's a red herring. There was advertising for Going Rogue. There was advertising for Freedom. If it brought in new users, the product was unable to retain them. That's on the product, not a lack of advertising.Originally Posted by Terwyn
We also have a game that had a non-existent advertising budget. That alone proves fatal for many ventures.
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Quote:True, but he actually recognizes it.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
They're not the one that needs it
There's no available therapy for smiley addiction, I'm afraid. 12 steps might be worth a shot. -
Quote:No, it was licensed. Cryptic still owns it. (Or now PWE)Originally Posted by blackjak
I was under the impression that Cryptic sold the engine to NcSoft awhile back.
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Quote:The same reports that show a steady decline in revenue in spite of an expansion and a major revenue generating initiative (Freedom)?Originally Posted by Terwyn
The same financial reports, which to me suggest a different story.
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Quote:And have you gotten psychiatric help yet?Originally Posted by GreatRock
/jranger
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Quote:Financial trends as reported in NCSoft's official quarterly filings for the last five years.Originally Posted by Terwyn
What grounds do you have to believe that City of Heroes was an unhealthy game?
What have you got? -
Quote:I tend to think that it's actually an important distinction, especially when it comes down to whether the studio and/or game were profitable or not.Originally Posted by Intrinsic
It's happened on these boards too, and I generally didn't consider it important enough to correct.
Many of the saveCoH crowd are angry because of the perception that a successful game is being shut down. If it turns out that the game was in fact losing money, would they be less angry? Probably not. But at least they'd need to find another reason to be angry. -
Quote:Irony.Originally Posted by MetalBritches
I'm shocked that you guys are bothering to acknowledge Brillig and Another_Fan. The "proof" that they are unicorns is in the level of their argument. If they had something more relevant than "did not" and "I know you are but what am I," then they would be somehow worth notice.
You haz it. -
Quote:That's exactly right, except you stopped the train of thought a stop early - now assume that NCSoft came by for a milestone check on GW2 and looked at what they saw and realized that there was no way it was going to sell in any significant numbers.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Think of it in ArenaNet terms - some devs were still working on GW1, while the rest were working on GW2 - the cost of developing GW2 was an investment, and wasn't palced on GW1 to support.
Well, they'd have to kill GW2, wouldn't they? And at that point would it really be worth keeping GW1 around for a trickle of income? A trickle that would become even smaller after the inevitable losses in players when the news gets out that half the studio was laid off?
Maybe it would be reasonable to close down Arena.net entirely and call it a day?
(Obviously, this is an analogy, since the Arena.net/NCSoft relationship was different than Paragon/NCSoft). -
Quote:Which, in turn, would mean that Brian Clayton had no idea what the real numbers were.Originally Posted by Terwyn
Think it was more likely Brian Clayton who handed them to her, myself.
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Quote:Which is ultimately irrelevant if NCSoft considers Paragon Studios as a whole rather than breaking it out individually.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Don't forget that over half the studio weren't working on CoH.
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Quote:80 person dev studio. Silicon Valley wages and cost of living. Add servers and support.Originally Posted by BlueBattler
So how much profit was COH making? I mean, given the probable salaries of the Paragon Studios staff they'd have to have been making SOME kind of profit or they would have been shut down well before this.
It's quite possible that Paragon wasn't making a profit at all, but was kept going because NCSoft wanted them to deliver the new game/secret project.
Arena.net probably wasn't making a profit the last couple of years either, after the last GW expansion. NCSoft kept them going in order to cash in on GW2. -
Quote:Actually, the implication is that "Larry" gave her the numbers, not someone in the studio. "Larry" being Larry Dixon, her husband.Originally Posted by Terwyn
Seems to me that she actually took the numbers someone else was throwing around, actually.
By that, I mean someone within the studio handed them to her. -
Quote:You think they're unaware? I don't. I think they're completely aware and acting deliberately.Originally Posted by Another_Fan
These
Btw it's a little telling that casual people are aware of the misinformation the titan forums are spreading but the front men arent
It's the same as GG's "Which thread?" "Where?" BS. Just trying to waste time and obscure the issue. -
Quote:The one where she said CoH had profits of $800k a month.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Which one?
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Quote:Editing other people's quotes is pretty much par for the course for you, isn't it?Originally Posted by TimTheEnchanter
Yay?Quote:Originally Posted by Brillig
This is automatically a lie, because I want it to be.
And if half of this is you assuming that Mercedes didn't actually say it, she did.
1. Golden Girl is practically the definition of biased where saveCOH is concerned. She has no credibility.
2. Mercedes Lackey has also made false statements and exaggerations in this matter. She is also not credible.
So yeah. Spin filtered through two levels of delusion. -
Quote:It means six more weeks of winter.Originally Posted by Darej
So whats this mean?
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Quote:Actually, it would have to be PWE, since Cryptic is a subsidiary now too. And open-sourcing the engine wouldn't do much other than make it possible for NCSoft to release the server software - everything that Paragon built on top of Cryptic's engine is not under PWE's control.Originally Posted by Rabid_M
If they did, it would be an interesting move on their part. Good PR from the masses, and a nice kick at NC Soft, all in one.