3Q Unaudited Earnings Report Now Available
By
Antigonus,
Posted on: 2009-11-06 13:40 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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Looks like most business graphs in the current financial situation 
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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What do the numbers on the left mean?
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Originally Posted by Mr. NoPants
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Consolidated Sales
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You're a good man, NoPants, but this graph needs a little work.|
Originally Posted by Mr. NoPants
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First of all, it's not labeled. For those wondering, this is the number of copies of CoH sold per quarter. Second, the graph makes things seem much more severe than what the numbers really indicate. The highest number of copies sold per quarter on this chart is shy of 7500, in the 3rd quarter of 2006. The lowest sold per quarter is somewhere in the neighborhood of 5300, in the 4th quarter of 2007. While there has been a drop in the number of copies sold since the 2nd quarter of this year, and the 3rd quarter sales for this year are on the low end of quarterly sales over the past 3 years, it's actually only a drop of around 1200. Not really DOOOOOOM-worthy. Also, we have no way of knowing how many of those sales were new players and how many were current players buying additional accounts.
Now, if we could still see subscription numbers, we'd have a much better barometer of the game's health.
Positron: "There are no bugs [in City of Heroes], just varying degrees of features."
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It could use a label I agree, but it's just raw data I made no claims about what this data means.
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Originally Posted by Goliath Bird Eater
You're a good man, NoPants, but this graph needs a little work.
First of all, it's not labeled. For those wondering, this is the number of copies of CoH sold per quarter. Second, the graph makes things seem much more severe than what the numbers really indicate. The highest number of copies sold per quarter on this chart is shy of 7500, in the 3rd quarter of 2006. The lowest sold per quarter is somewhere in the neighborhood of 5300, in the 4th quarter of 2007. While there has been a drop in the number of copies sold since the 2nd quarter of this year, and the 3rd quarter sales for this year are on the low end of quarterly sales over the past 3 years, it's actually only a drop of around 1200. not really DOOOOOOM-worthy. Now, if we could still see subscription numbers, we'd have a much better barometer of the game's health. |
The drop between Q2 and Q3 could have been some cel-shaded beast devouring the innocent
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
Also, without any numbers to show how many accounts got deactivated during the same time period, what we're seeing is pretty useless.
Loose --> not tight.
Lose --> Did not win, misplace, cannot find, subtract.
One extra 'o' makes a big difference.
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Agreed
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Originally Posted by White Hot Flash
Also, without any numbers to show how many accounts got deactivated during the same time period, what we're seeing is pretty useless.
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Like the facts matter for the people who cry "DOOOOOOM!"
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Originally Posted by Rubberlad
Just made available today.
Honestly its not all doom and gloom - go see for yourself: http://www.ncsoft.net/global/ir/quarterly.aspx |
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Or people deciding to buy the other new shiny - the one with the really pretty characters and all the wings - as opposed to CoH. Who knows? As I said, it's not as earth-shattering as the graph would seemingly indicate upon first glance. Especially since the data shows that there have consistently been between 5,000 and 7500 new copies of CoH sold per quarter for the past 3 years. Still not nearly as informative as subscriber info, though.
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Originally Posted by Golden Girl
The drop between Q2 and Q3 could have been some cel-shaded beast devouring the innocent
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Positron: "There are no bugs [in City of Heroes], just varying degrees of features."
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The only thing the chart really says is "Sells were low but not the lowest they've been". Anyone who sees it and goes "DOOOM!" is saying +5k new players a quarter is a sign of fail.
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Originally Posted by Goliath Bird Eater
Or people deciding to buy the other new shiny - the one with the really pretty characters and all the wings - as opposed to CoH. Who knows? As I said, it's not as earth-shattering as the graph would seemingly indicate upon first glance. Especially since the data shows that there have consistently been between 5,000 and 7500 new copies of CoH sold per quarter for the past 3 years. Still not nearly as informative as subscriber info, though.
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Ashcraft been published.
Some dates:
3Q 2006 GVE edition
(4Q 2007 NCsoft buys the Cryptic portion of the Franchise)
1Q 2009 Mac edition
2Q 2009 Architect Edition
@Catwhoorg "Rule of Three - Finale" Arc# 1984
@Mr Falkland Islands"A Nation Goes Rogue" Arc# 2369 "Toasters and Pop Tarts" Arc#116617
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Well, if the Mac and AE editions helped sell that many, then I think GR will help sell a whole lot more |
Originally Posted by Catwhoorg
Some dates:
3Q 2006 GVE edition (4Q 2007 NCsoft buys the Cryptic portion of the Franchise) 1Q 2009 Mac edition 2Q 2009 Architect Edition |
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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And you know damn well that we have some of those folks running around here.
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Originally Posted by Mr. NoPants
The only thing the chart really says is "Sells were low but not the lowest they've been". Anyone who sees it and goes "DOOOM!" is saying +5k new players a quarter is a sign of fail.
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Positron: "There are no bugs [in City of Heroes], just varying degrees of features."
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I think it's good they come forward so we can label them to ignore later.
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Originally Posted by Goliath Bird Eater
And you know damn well that we have some of those folks running around here.
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Yeah ... too bad they learned to serpentine when near the guard towers.
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Originally Posted by Mr. NoPants
I think it's good they come forward so we can label them to ignore later.
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Positron: "There are no bugs [in City of Heroes], just varying degrees of features."
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I put in spikes.
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Originally Posted by Goliath Bird Eater
Yeah ... too bad they learned to serpentine when near the guard towers.
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An interesting graph, which needs to be viewed along with a lot of other relevant data to really come to some sound financial conclusions.
However, just looking at the graph:
1) This is the only time that there has been a decrease in sales for three consecutive quarters
2) Each quarter in 2009 the % drop in sales has increased, with an 18% loss in Q3
Again, this is only part of the story. However, the finance folks at Paragon surely get uneasy seeing this data.
Go Team Venture!
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awsome...|
Originally Posted by Ashcraft
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+rep to follow
Now, I'm not a statistician, by any means, and I AM grateful to finally have some numbers, but these numbers are very much the least useful they could have shared. MMOs really don't thrive on new box sales, and while I understand that new players are always good, City of Heroes has been proven to be an MMO which relies less on churn and more on retention. It's interesting, I'm just not sure how much it says.
As to the graph, that's actually problem with graphs in general - scale. This one goes from 5200 to 7600, which actually only a band of 2300, which makes fluctuations look like large peaks and valleys. I understand its point is clarity so number bands where data points don't exist are cut, but makes the fluctuations seem much more wild comparative to the actual number values. The last data point looks like it's a little below 5500, but to the conclusion speeders, on this chart it may as well be -0.
Again, I don't want to demean the efforts of the Pantsless One, because it is a nice representation, but as with all data, the devil is in the interpretation. Just raw data can actually be more misleading than no data at all. And even I jumped to conclusions at first, so I'm not exaggerating.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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That makes me wanna play Worms on my XBox 360 again
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Originally Posted by Ashcraft
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Just made available today.
Honestly its not all doom and gloom - go see for yourself:
http://www.ncsoft.net/global/ir/quarterly.aspx