Pebblebrook

Thank you for posting that. I'm really not lazy, just weary of giving personal info to fan sites.

Now looking at that post, it's making me less confident so that i'm leaning more into rumor. Although $3 million does sound low.

I agree on some of his points except for some specifics like his valuation of a complete business takeover of Paragon Studios as being worth $100 million.

As i mentioned before, Cryptic only last year was sold for $50 million to PWE and Cryptic had 3 IPs and 2 of which are operational.

If selling only the CoX IP and nothing else is hard to speculate without more information. CoX has earned NCSoft about $70 million in the 5 years since the buyout but that was slowing down.

Although not exactly the same, maybe we can use the sale of the Kingdoms of Amalur IP once it gets auctioned off and see how much that takes in. Analyst Pachter is estimating the amalur IP is only worth $20 million...interesting he used the word "only" even if he thinks the market is poor for game assets.

Oooh, can you throw a link to that?

And dang, you sure only $3mil? Even if that's just the IP and not IP+studio, that seems too low to be worth the work to transfer ownership.

Only last year, Atari sold Cryptic to PWE for about $50mil but that's with 3 IPs and studio...but still even a third of that is over $16mil.

Maybe similar reason Apple Inc's stock price is on a decline since its spike in mid september...too many investors accidentally driving into the ocean after using iMaps looking for a gas station.

Yes, Nexon does seem to want to acquire IPs or share expertise in making big mmos rather than killing them. That's sort of mentioned in their investor letter...well the acquiring part, no mention of any killing.

And if its image is the problem, well if they got their hands on CoX, that image could be improved with say a CoX sequel instead of a shut down? Unless they didn't think Paragon could do that well enough...then again, they could assign it to another studio.

Still too many questions when using that angle than i would like.

The thing i'm still wrestling with about that notion of an emergency action is what specifically was the emergency.

I suppose that big dip in their operating profit may be it but that was mostly from deliberate actions on their part when they decided to spend millions on acquisitions and marketing for their upcoming games, not from something out of their control that they panicked enough to hit the jettison button.

Perhaps the revenue dip of Aion from 53 bil won to 36bil may have triggered that panic but their total revenue for all games overall increased from 126 billion won to about 130 billion. And they were fully expecting B&S and GW2 to bump their earnings up the very next quarter.

Well the 3Q numbers aren't due out for several more weeks so maybe that will shed better light on it.


Now the short notice to Paragon, that does seem like a head-scratcher...did absolutely no one including the execs knew or have any inkling? That's still questionable.

I suppose it's possible there's a non-financial reason for it but i don't have any direct info that points to that direction. So far, i have more reason to lean towards a directly financial motive than a non-financial or indirect one (CoX as collateral damage outside its influence).

Hopefully more information surfaces.

The purpose of converting CoX's revenue to USD is to get a better representation of those numbers. You can convert it to norwegian krone if you like and analyze the numbers that way, but it would be misleading.

Thank you, i'll add that link for UnSub.

But that second link of part 2 of that podcast, i actually already have. I had the impression when you said Zwillinger confirmed CoX's cancellation was part of the secret project's rejection. I tried listening to the whole thing again, both parts and the only time i heard him mention the secret project was when he described its target audience...nothing about the cancellation.

Maybe it's from a different link then?


Side request to UnSub: In that linked blog, you said you copy/pasted dev comments but i don't see a link for the original source.

Do you still have that link? Would like it even if it's a dead one, can always try using internet archive.

Thanks in advance.

Hmm, i think there might be something off a bit.

When you say the past 5 years, i take it you mean the last 20 quarters (3Q07 - 2Q12) is that right? I got these totals for that period.

It's a difference of only about $1.4 million in 5 years or 279k per year.

There's also some things to consider.

The very likely reason for GW started to earn less per year than CoX starting in 2008 is because back in march 2007, they not only announced their next (and apparently last) expansion to release at the end of 2007 but also that development on GW2 has already begun.

So from 2008 on, there hasn't been much in lieu of content except for the occassional cash shop mtx items for the next 5 years. But Arenanet has demonstrated they can create products that generate more significant revenue boosts multiple times than what Paragon could muster. (See expansion comparisons from my previous post.)

And even being in what can be considered maintenance mode, GW's yearly revenue has still managed to perform relatively close to CoX differing only by about 279k/yr.


EDIT:
It's understandable and quite expected that GW's revenue seem more erratic on a quarterly basis, but that's obviously because of the lack of subscriptions as a more predictable revenue source.

They're completely different products with wildly different business models to try and use revenue "stability" as a means to determine long-term viability.

* I put stability in quotes since it's a tad misleading otherwise...instead of stable, i would probably describe it as predictably declining.

Hi, don't take this as a response to your points. I just like collecting notable links.

Could you provide links to those you mentioned above...i'm afraid i've been slacking off and may have missed those.

Would be appreciative.

Yes, it might be stretching it a bit to try and equate GW's performance and development with CoX's since they're basically different products like comparing a studio making console games versus one that does tradtional mmos.

But if we have to compare, i suppose we can use what they have in common...expansions.

Factions released in 2Q 2006 boosted revenue by about $10.6 million.
Nightfall released in 4Q 2006, spiked revenue by about $ 8 million.
Eye of the North in 3Q 2007 gained an increase of about $5.2 million.

CoV released in 4Q 2005 spike to about $8.8million. (under Cryptic)
GR in 3Q 2010 bumped to about $1.8 million. (under Paragon Studios)
F2P in 4Q 2011 nudged about $400 thousand.

* I know, Freedom is not an expansion but it's a note worthy relaunch of the brand. And since there's a distinct lack of other expansions.

And yes, GW's revenue has diminished in recent years starting mind you, at the time they shifted gears from another expansion to announcing they were working on a sequel. But also GW's earnings is not just the revenue number shown in the reports. NCSoft has partners to run GW in other regions which shows up under royalties.



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The lack of definitive answers has sprung a myriad of speculation as to the reasoning for the closure. The problem with speculation is that it can be spun in different ways.

So just to add to that problem , the following will contain some tinfoil worthy elements.

Let's say for instance that after several years of NCSoft's commitment to the game started to waiver when CoX's revenue got cut by almost half 3 years ago through various reasons and that got NCSoft's top brass to start questioning CoX's long-term potential.

They waited to see what if anything the devs can do to reverse that.

But after trying an expansion which only provided a modest boost of about $1.8mil compared to it's last expansion before the big revenue cut that got a jump of $8.8mil and even after trying F2P which provided an even less of a temporary boost in revenue by just spiking about $400k. All the while, revenue is still declining.

Those lackluster performances possibly have gained the attention (not the good kind) of NCSoft's top brass.

If something changed in the past few years, maybe it's NCSoft's confidence in Paragon Studio's ability to develop a growing revenue stream whether existing or new, on top of the fact its only revenue source has dwindled from earning $25 million in 2007 when NCSoft bought Cryptic's 50% stake in it, down to possibly even about $9 million this year.

Slight correction here.

CoX's revenue last quarter was approximately $2,469,437 which gives about $822k per month. And that's not every month...it's down to that and likely to decrease still.

An estimate for 2012's total revenue for the year is looking to be in the high $9mil or low $10mil.

Current cost is not known and can change either direction, there seems to be signs of cost cutting on their part over the years but then there's some indication of increased cost from the f2p implementation.

The only cost number i have seen is 8 years out of date but it was $18mil/per year. That's probably not very helpful, i'm sure it's very different now but maybe some skilled number crunchers can get a ballpark figure from that.




Forbes article when CoH was new so i'm sure the cost to market the game has shrunk since.

I think for me, i would need more info before connecting their secret project with "...continued support of the franchise no longer fits within our long term goals..." as the main reason for the shutdown.

It could be a factor for the closure decision...but still not sure it's a significant part of that decision. Since that project was said to not be part of CoX. If NCSoft didn't like the new project because of its target audience, that sounds like a good reason to deny just that project and not the whole thing unless something else more compelling was the driving force.

[tinfoil] Perhaps Paragon's insistence on continuing with the secret project and diverting resources from CoX to it sounds just as plausible a reason but not sure how likely. [/tinfoil]

I mentioned this elsewhere but i still believe CoX's declining revenue is a significant part of their decision. And it wasn't $10mil per year...it's looking like it's down to maybe $10mil this year and even possibly down to about $9 mil.

Which is down from about $11mil the year before...which was down from $13.6mil the year before that and down from $17.8 mil before that and so on.

If the rate of decline continued to next year, we could possibly see maybe only about $8mil for 2013.

Sorry again, you just reminded me of another recent curiosity.

Some are posting about NCSoft's asking price and/or legal conditions are too unreasonable and they seem to phrase it in more certain terms. But you're using "if" in yours...is there specific info about NCSoft negotiating in bad faith?

I'm more curious about that part.

You may not have any links and don't have to name any names but what exactly did they say about profit? Did they give you specifics or something vague like "very well" and "significant"?

The second sentence makes it sound like you weren't told a numerical figure so have to ask...also when did they say it?

Sorry if this sounds annoying...it's been an ever nagging question for me.

There does seem to be some instances of thrown insults from both camps but in fairness, there can be a fine line between hope and delusion depending on your perspective.

I didn't say it wasn't used in the case or whether it addresses what you want but when you first replied to me, "I" was addressing the point that the open letter was portrayed by some as a forgery and it's not more a forgery as a politician's speech written by a speech writer.

If you can show me in that court case where they said that open letter was forged, please point that to me.

Except the open letter was not put forward as the fraud and he didn't win for that.

Yes, you can't make a case for fraud if the subject knowingly approved it. So saying that open letter was a forgery is a tad misleading.

Not saying there were no ulterior motives for it or "dubious" as i mentioned before, but that was not what the case that he won was about.



*Sorry...responding late but was preoccupied with things. Oh and thanks for that link...added to my collection.

There might have been dubious motives for the supposed "open letter" by Garriot but it wasn't so much a forgery since Garriot approved it even if he didn't write it.

Not really trying to absolve NCSoft but Mercedes Lackey's information is slightly off when it comes to the alleged forgery portion.

I don't know about never, but i do know of at least one instance where that notion was erroneous since a few posters just in recent months has accused me of some sort of corporate espionage because most of the topics i chose to participate in involved CoX's number status.

It would've been amusing if it wasn't so outrageous.

Does it ever happen? Maybe.

But it's not like this the first time there was a fanbase campaign to save an mmo...it's not even the first time in NCSoft's history. Auto assault had a save AA campaign also, and as in both cases, they (NCSoft) have the advantage of control.

I don't know if CoX's closure is even news in Korea.

As for ML, displaying passion towards a cause is fine...but if the method used is to reform facts around an obvious bias, that would probably be more harmful than good. It's not just that she has relayed some erroneous information but that she used that to fortify her position.

When she claimed that NCSoft never gave refunds before (which is false) that can be dismissed...no one is expected to know everything. But she used that to solidify the notion that they are having a favorable effect because of it. Just as she is now saying they are still having an effect because NCSoft is supposedly sending troll infiltrators to squash their rebellion.

It sort of reminds me a bit of Fox News personalities to be honest.


Then again, Fox News does have high tv ratings...hmm.

It's understandable how her credibility with some is affected by some apparent misinformation on her part, but that quoted part is particularly curious for me.

I would think any of the usual NDA type policy or courtesy shown by ex-employees towards their old employer that prevents them from relaying internal/confidential information to the public would apply to all un-involved parties whether they're your customers or celebrities.

Otherwise i would think that would be considered a breach.

Unless the information given to one was vague or deemed safe enough that it could be relayed to the general public instead of being kept to a sole confidant.

All that is just asking for some eyebrow raising at the least, i would think.