Pebblebrook

It's not quite the same situation besides the obvious way.

Cryptic wasn't owned by NCSoft and they had something they could sell off to NCSoft to get more capital to start off on their other project. And the IP they sold was generating about $25mil/year at the time of their negotiations...right now it's looking to generate about $10mil this year.

Haven't checked how that crowd-sourcing effort some have started is doing right now but the petition so far is only 11k...unless all those are willing to donate a lot of money, not sure it would be enough unless the PS execs have a lot of money to chip into the pot also.

My pessimistic side is thinking if anything comes out of it at all, it might just be a revision of their exit strategy but there would still be a closure.


Maybe instead of just a petition, perhaps add a pledge along with it?

I don't mean whip out a credit card right now but maybe have a spot to add a monetary value each person who signs it can pledge how much they would be willing to donate and have that total counter up front.

Maybe that would be more convincing to have a large monetary amount NCSoft can see even if it's just a pledge and not actual funds yet.

There's been a few news items with The Secret World. Funcom's CEO stepped down just before it went live, their shares took 40% drop after the launch, layoffs, and sales were only a bit over 200k copies which was below expectations which cost them $35mil impairment charge.

They said they're still going to go as planned as far as content development is concerned but i'm sure all that will somehow have some sort of impact.


Funcom quarterly report

Hmm, i know where they got that 43 million characters created but where did they get the 9 million players?

Hmm, strange. Maybe it's a browser thing. I just "saved link as.." from firefox and it worked on any of them. Tried a couple at random.

Not trying to take away from what you said but would be nice to verify those two numbers are comparable. I think the Freem 15 was developers and the 80 people includes everyone devs/non-devs alike.

But i haven't been following the staffing changes closely...maybe someone can confirm the 15 number is the entire studio (Cryptic) at the time or its just the dev team? And they did add staff but if someone can also breakdown that 80 number...how many of those are devs?




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And just so my post isn't a complete threadjack...to the OP's topic:

I wouldn't go so far to use the word wrong...i'll leave that to game designers and historians. And i hope the following comment is taken as feedback and not as a "kick a person while they're down" thing.

But from personal experience and seeing the forums, the most often criticism i recall seem to be the repetitiveness (grindy) feeling people get the longer they play. I keep hearing calls of taking breaks from the game.

It's always been but maybe happening more often after the devs decided to nudge people away from streetsweeping and into instanced missions. It didn't just had the effect of the appearance of a less populated world but it also put focus on the repetitiveness of these games when you're seeing the same maps over and over.

It didn't help that there wasn't much to do after 50 except maybe farm which adds to the repetition or create alts which took you back through the same content and maps once again.

When they finally added a more clearly defined endgame, besides the complaints about the group requirement, there was once again concerns about repetition.

There are other things i can mention but maybe start with that for now.

Cool...thank you. Catching up with news is daunting hehe.

Hmm, the theory that they might be refocusing on games that are more global in reach (works in eastern and western territories) is sounding better. Not necessarily abandoning NA but maybe a game that speaks to both NA and asia.

That's interesting...CoX does seem to be one of or the only current game that couldn't get traction in asia...City of Hero didn't last at all in Korea.

I thought it was obvious since i even mention they (NCSoft) never broke down operating costs by game but sorry, that was talking about loss in "revenue"

And profit comes from revenue. They can still be profitable, but with shrinking revenue, unless they keep shaving off costs, there's nowhere profit can go but lower eventually.

And yes cost is a moving target so really can't even guess what their profit margins are so i don't. There was only one mention of how much CoH was costing NCSoft and that was $18mil per year...but that was 8 years ago. I'm sure it's very different now.

News is in a flurry so possibly missed some...if you can have that person post a link for that info would be nice. (Not implying any issues with validity...i just like collecting news links to things i'm interested in)

Last news i saw was in this one in 8/15/12 that mentions:
That also mentions B&S troubles.

FYI: I have pm disabled since forever...if there's a question you can ask in the threads.

There's an interesting timeline to that.

In late 2009, CoX's revenue took a hit by almost half...early 2010 they firmly decided to work on the F2P intergration. After a year with F2P, CoX's revenue was still showing a downward direction and looks like it keeps setting record lows.

Majority of CoX's revenue is from NA so if you convert to USD you'll get a better approximation (not exact since a small portion of that is from EU) of the revenue trajectory.

And year after year, CoX's yearly revenue keeps decreasing. In 2010 it made about $13.5mil, 2011 was $10.9 and at the half year mark...2012 was looking to make about $10mil. (If it were to continue...likely would be less now with the freeze)

The year NCSoft bought CoX from Cryptic (2007) CoX made $25mil that year. Less than half what it's looking like this year.

Before Freedom, CoX (not counting the temporary spikes from some releases) was basically losing about $100k to $150k a quarter...after freedom it was losing about $80k USD.

Needed another quarter to get a better picture of that but so far F2P was slowing down the decline but it was still declining and not knowing how far they can go down since they never breakdown operating costs by game in their public reports so not sure how much longer they can continue that decline but maybe they're close and the outlook that even F2P couldn't reverse that decline (along with other factors like whatever their refocus target is) didn't help but maybe spur their decision along.

Whatever else their reasons are that concluded in this event, the poor long-term outlook of CoX's revenue didn't help.

I don't know what else after trying a year of F2P they could try to reverse that revenue trend. Seems like NCSoft gave them a couple years to try.

[speculation]

That other Paragon project they diverted personnel to may have been PS's attempt to avert having all their eggs in this one basket but didn't have enough time.

[/speculation]



EDIT: I mentioned this in other threads but NCSoft's operating profit/income dipped into the red once before in 2006. Granted not as deep as last quarter's but they had expected the releases of GW2 in north america and Blade&Soul in korea territories in this quarter to compensate just as that time in 2006 where the quarter after the dip, their income shot back up.

And GW2 so far is only released in the western territories, no news yet of releasing in asia so not sure about abandoning the NA region in their refocus. Don't really know how they're refocusing yet.


EDIT2: GW2 and B&S does show promise but it's still early and B&S is showing signs of slowing already so have to wait and see.

It's not the first time their net income dipped into negative. In 2006 it went into the red (of course not as much as last quarter) but the following quarter their net income shot back up.

This quarter they had blade & soul mmo launch in korea and guild wars 2 in north america/eu region so their net income was expected to shoot back up to compensate for their expenses in the previous quarter.

Guild wars 2 pre-sold over a million copies and b&s did better than Aion in the first month.

Whether or not it will be enough is still a question...bit early to tell. It is said the Ntreev acquisition cost them about $100mil and b&s about $50mil...not sure how much gw2 cost them but taking 5 years to develop just like b&s, maybe it's about the same.

It is however a bit early to tell...gw2 had some problems and b&s though had a good reception, has decreased in user time drastically after diablo3 launched.

EDIT: With some talk about refocusing their business, they did mention they are but not where/how they're refocusing. Not sure if they're going away from the north american region since guild wars 2 is launched in the na/euro territories with no mention of releasing in asia yet.

Whatever their full reasons are i'm not sure that's a simple answer as just doing away with NA. However one might feel about CoX, in the overall picture, CoX's revenue barely constitues 2% of NCSoft's total revenue. Unless something drastic happens to that other 98%, i don't think NCSoft is going anywhere anytime soon.

It's not that far-fetched to have no time limit on the license as long as they keep paying the fee.

I would doubt very much that NCSoft would completely buy off the IP if there's a clause that Cryptic can use to shut them down. Not when it was known that Cryptic was developing (at the time) the only direct competitor to CoX (Marvel Univerese>Champions Online)

Well it was looking like they were going to make about $10mil USD for 2012 and in the year NCSoft bought it out from Cryptic in 2007 it was about $25mil USD.

But seems doubtful they would sell it off.

They have operating costs, they just don't say how much that is but CoX's revenue was still in decline and even F2P for a year didn't reverse that. And corporate likes to look at revenue/financial trajectories.

Tabula Rasa didn't make money from the start but NCSoft kept it going for a year till they shut it down 3 months after they announced it (from the shutdown notice)

Not sure about that 5 year license rumor though... never seen any mention of a time frame for the licensing deal but possible i suppose.

PWE/Cryptic has a different/newer version of the CrypticEngine that they're using in CO/STO/Neverwinter.

CoX is the only game using the old engine so if PWE could get some money from continuing to license it, not sure why they would be against that. Unless they worried about the competition, but that seems unlikely.

Actually that could be a fun send off for the game...maybe enable dev tools/functions or something at the last day.

Hmm, risking some blowback here especially during a somber time but in case there's more information behind it, can you elaborate since that statement doesn't seem to match NCSoft's reports though.

What i was seeing was their revenue kept decreasing even after F2P.

I don't know about that so much.

CoX's revenue has been in a downward trajectory for quite some time and even adding the F2P option has not reversed that direction.

And Guild Wars 2 i think pre-sold over 1 million copies and had 400k concurrent users in the headstart...which seems promising but it's a bit early.

That game you mentioned may not be a good example since a statement in their earnings report says it's not looking like they'll meet any of their expected financial goals...and level-less progression has been done by another game that was shut down.

Customization does help and freedom of play has become a more common preference not just online but in offline games...(the open world concept on console games)...but it's more than that i think.

When the mmorpg thing took off 13 some years ago, the customer base was (guessing) probably in the millions and now they're what...in the 10s of millions?

The composition of the mmo gaming public has most likely changed. Not just in the newcomers but even the vets' preference may have changed as well. Mix in a business model that encourages (for lack of a better phrase) *disloyalty on any single game in the long-term (mmo terms that means years instead of weeks/months for singleplayer games). It doesn't all fall on any developers shoulders, it's partly (probably mostly) falls on the new composition of mmo players they're trying to attract.

[EDIT: * To clarify, i mean financially staying with only one game]

And then you add, as others mentioned, a saturated gamespace and what you'll get is not necessarily less customers but a more dispersed market. It will be very difficult and likely costly to try and amass a large concentration of that market into one game for a long time (past the first few months.)

Besides the player retention problems that glow sword mmo is having, that game did show that there is still a market out there for mmos. In about half a year with its box sales and 1mil+ subs during that time, it must've made over $200 million in revenue and if they can stay in the black for the year they'll pay off their initial dev costs. For perspective, CoX took 8+ years to make about $180 mil USD.

So there is still a market for it, but i think its biggest problem is in retaining a large chunk of that market for a lengthy period.

Maybe instead of using a broad stroke philosophy in designing mmos, there needs to be a multi-targeted approach. There still are a lot of people who like to grind, just as there are people really into only/mostly pvp, or casual visitors and hardcore residents in games, but trying to design a single game to attract all of those at once to any great degree is impossible...something or everything will get watered down or doesn't mix well with the others.

Either that or settle for your own niche of the market pie and plan your budget accordingly.

If by standings you mean CoX's profit margin, then yes those reports have never shown an itemized breakdown of that by game, only company wide. That's why i don't comment on CoX's solvency but all money paid into CoX from customers via subs and mtx is reflected in their revenue number.

Why it's still declining after Freedom we can only speculate.

(Complete speculation to follow: ) I would suspect that more people are dropping to premium once their multi-month subs expire than there are people upping/re-upping to VIP. Also it may be that the using of points is not reflected in that revenue number...only the buying of points does so if there's a bunch of people sitting on points from a bulk purchase from previous quarters and/or the build up from the stipend then that could also be a factor.

(Maybe someone who actually works for an mmo with a cash shop can confirm or refute the part about the points, hopefully)

And yes although i think that's the first quarter i remember NCsoft's net income dipping into the negative (will have to look back to confirm), they did make some acquisitions and investments into some games that are about to release that shows a lot of interests from their betas that could bring those numbers back into the black this quarter.

And although Aion taking a big dip in sales had an effect, it was compensated by an almost equal increase from Lineage1.

I haven't yet bought any points since Freedom...still have the leftover from the grant/stipend when i was subbed. But then again, i'm playing extremely casually.

If you're interested in the financials you can always check out the quarterly reports. yourself but should convert to USD to get a better idea. The reports are all mostly there except for the first year, they removed those for some reason.

For a quick reference, here's the revenue since Freedom so far:

Added tidbit...not sure what it is since, but for about the first couple of weeks of Freedom it was mentioned that 19% of VIPs bought points.

Oh i saw them, i just don't generally respond to such things. I'm already uncomfortable sidetracking this thread so far off topic but it seemed necessary.

And a stranger offering sweets...hmm, maybe i'll wait when i don't see a parked windowless van.

....



See what happens when i try...not a pretty picture.

Shouldn't shy away from asking...that's how information is revealed.

And i always thought i put care into sounding non-antagonistic as much as i can in my posts...guess that comes across as serious.

Though i tried letting my hair down some years ago and i replied on a tv show topic in the comic forum section...it felt weird.