Father Xmas

They mentioned B&S coming to NA and EU in their investors reports for at least a year now, it's not a surprise it was a given.

I think a better guess would be which current MMO in their stable isn't popular in their primary markets and is not a sword/sorcery fantasy MMO? I can also believe NCSoft placing their moneys on Carbine/WildStar as a game that'll appeal to western and eastern markets than low revenue generating superhero game that appeals only in NA.

And they only lost $6 million US, 6 billion KrW, but the key issue was it was the companies first negative quarter ever.

I always found it odd that people instantly reject a game or comic simply because of it's looks. I've always found gameplay or story (in the case of comics and animation) trumps art style.

Supposedly B&S has a rather impressive attack/combo mechanic that might appeal to the console gamer besides the looks of a period Chinese action movie genre that includes wall/water/air running. Now I don't think fans of either genre in NA would turn out in droves to play this game. The MMO market is getting diluted like the TV series market. Simply too many options, too little time/budget to play/watch everything you want to.

I was checking out some of the Wildstar videos, last one I saw was one where they demoed their telegraph mechanic which shows you a couple a seconds ahead of time what area will be affected either by the attack by you and your enemies. But for an old guy like me, it strikes me as a little too twitchy for my dulled reflexes.

Okay, I whipped together a chart of the running four quarter revenues of both CoH and GW (because that's what on the spreadsheet). These are NOT quarterly numbers but the sum of the previous four quarters to show an "annual" revenue and smooths out any seasonal differences in quarters.



The blue line is CoH, the red GW. The bump in our revenues was caused by a very, very, very good Q4 2005. I guess the holiday season combined with both CoH and CoV being on the store shelves as well as the collectors editions. But four quarters later, BAM, you can imagine where the line would have gone if it wasn't for that extraordinary quarter. We then slowly decayed until it sped up in late 2009 only to be arrested by the box release of Going Rogue. When that quarter finally gets removed we end up actually rather stable for four quarters with a $10-11 million dollar "annual" revenues. Virtually no bump in revenues by going hybrid.

Guild Wars is a very different story. Their sole source of income are box sales. Besides the three expansions they also released a number of Game plus previous X expansions (when 2nd expansion comes out they sell a Game plus the first expansion, etc). Once they were done cranking out expansions, their revenue dropped down to level below us selling a lower priced combo box sets or digital downloads.

I can see some people going "but wait, their revenues crossed ours after Q4 2008". Yes, but by then GW has earned $30 million more lifetime than CoH, a nice nest egg to sit on while developing GW2. They were still up by $15 million lifetime at Q2 2012.

I was there this afternoon, looked like the same crowd.

Dibs on Tanker.

The timeline for CoV annoyed me the most which is why I pointed it out.

And I'm still the only comment there, must not be that popular of a site or doesn't normally draw an MMO crowd.

An interesting thing happened while I was at my parent's tonight. I was on one of their computers looking at the CNN piece on the new iPhone and when I got to the bottom of the page, guess what I found?

Not sure how long it'll stay there but here's the link to the iPhone story.

This isn't about workers actively sabotaging each other, it's about the idea that members of each team were required to graded to fit a Gaussian curve when there is disparity between teams. In software development the number frequently tossed about is 10 to 1 productivity difference between best and worst individual. So if one team is composed of 7 through 9s while the other 4 through 6s, one team's 7 is classified the same as the other team's 4, in the eyes of HR review guidelines.

So when the boss of the two team's manager or even his boss determines who gets what for raises or who will be let go, he has reviews that don't show him the true worth of the individual because each team is measured separately and each team is required to bin their members according to the curve. No backstabbing required.

Actually I think at that point when the man walks over to the table and the camera changes when they all turn to look at him, have it go from live action to Pocket D with all the women in costume while the man is in similar clothes to the live action portion.

CO and Aion were released in that time frame.

As for issues, the only issues that came out Q2 through Q4 that year were I14: Mission Architect, I15: Anniversary and I16: Power Spectrum.

It's possible that it took that long to see the fallout of PvP changes and/or players who were upset over the many "tweaks" done to MA to fix the numerous exploits but we are talking 40-60% loss in revenue. I'm sure if the PvP community was that large those I13 changes would have been rolled back to some extent and I would like to think that 1/2 the players in the game at the time would NOT get upset enough that the quick path to XP and IOs that didn't exist 6 months before was "fixed", so they choose to quit.

I'm leaning more toward leaving to try CO for whatever reason and even if they didn't like CO, just didn't come back here.

Don't know if you're the one that's behind Vicarious Existence blog Pebble but I find this chart interesting.



The interesting part for me is the sudden drop in revenues between Q2 and Q4 of 2009. It looks as if we're on the same slight downward slope in revenues before and after that period, just offset by around $2 million per quarter. What happened from July to October 2009 that caused revenues to shift from roughly $5 million per quarter before to only $3 after?

Well this all goes back to "it's now a serious business". A big budget title that misses a holiday release can hurt stock prices as all the analysts downgrade your stock. So got to ship.

The biggest downside of giving game consoles internet connectivity and a hard drive is that console games can be shipped incomplete and full of bugs just like PC games.

Private development studios aren't as pressured to release a game before it's time. Sure sometimes they have to because they need to meet payroll or their investors are making a lot of noise. They are also usually run not by the money guys but by someone who was/is a game developer and avid game player. They understand the customer more because they are one.

And yes, GOG is a great place for older games for little money.

The regional manager has to chew your group out and report that he did to show his boss that he is doing his job. Even though there's rarely ever any repercussions, him not scolding your group tells his boss that he isn't doing his job as his boss sees it.

A couple of days ago in my local supermarket I spotted a chain bigwig with the store manager in tow and the bigwig scolding the women in the bakery department that the sale signs aren't at the same level on all three display tables. Really? Sign height? Of course in his mind he has to provide some type of constructive feedback to every department in every store to justify his inspection of every store?

It's like doing employee reviews. You are discouraged, severely by HR, to give everyone in your group excellent ratings, even if they all are. You are told you have to nitpick to find areas of improvement and fit all the review to the "curve" so at least one employee on your team is "below average". Of course if your team is heads and tails above another manager's team and when that other team's best person is still worse than your "below average" person, when layoffs or raises come it doesn't matter. Your boss simply fires all "below average" people or dole out raise amounts based on reviews.

Actually you do get rather sharp shadows from planes and helicopters when they pass in front of the sun, as long as they block a reasonably large fraction of it. Of course that means they are only above you by several hundred feet or less when then pass. You just need to be really close to where the shadow passes or caught in it to notice because it is moving at the same speed as the plane or helicopter.

Saw one a few days ago when a small plane overflew near my condo complex on a nice sunny day. It can really startle you. We aren't programmed to expect flying predators.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=299knTdX-Wo

Well Newchem, some people buy what's on the lot. His budget is a hard $890 including shipping and tax and it includes a 22" 1080P monitor. So that's a really small budget for just the rig.

A hardware geek like us might be able to configure a better computer from what's available as choices at CyberPowerPC for the money but for someone who isn't waiting for the NDA to expire on the GTX 650 and 660 reviews in two days or has a bookmark tab of review sites and searchable benchmark tables, you buy what's offered that's within your budget.

Better than just being a curmudgeon.

That's why I say their Geek blog. They've covered cosplaying at Dragon-con and sexism in gaming. A link to one of the Geek blog stories occasionally appear on their front page.