2010 2nd quarter earnings
By
Acemace,
Posted on: 2010-08-14 09:09 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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From the context of the OP, I understood the "anemic state" as referring to the development of the game, not the perceived population.
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Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
It's anemic in the sense that a huge portion of the playerbase qualified to be invited to the closed beta testing of GR, and once invited, we flocked to the test server to try out the new stuff as soon as possible. As a result we weren't on the live servers which gave the illusion that the population had dropped significantly.
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Agua Man lvl 48 Water/Electric Blaster
"To die hating NCSoft for shutting down City of Heroes, that was Freedom."
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Those weren't pre-orders they were pre-purchase. Money actually exchanged hands and goods/services were exchanged.
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Originally Posted by Chase_Arcanum
Preorders would likewise not be included (though a portion MAY be included, as the preorder did have some tangible immediate product delivery (the powersets)).
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Oh, yeah, and then there was that. At one point I thought the game really was in trouble because the forums were DEAD. Then I got invited to Beta, and I realised that everyone was there |
Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
It's anemic in the sense that a huge portion of the playerbase qualified to be invited to the closed beta testing of GR, and once invited, we flocked to the test server to try out the new stuff as soon as possible. As a result we weren't on the live servers which gave the illusion that the population had dropped significantly.
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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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I figured that's where everyone was hiding out. |
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Oh, yeah, and then there was that. At one point I thought the game really was in trouble because the forums were DEAD. Then I got invited to Beta, and I realised that everyone was there
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Damn cool kids and their super-secret-hidden-clique-boards
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Your Euro account would have gotten an invite, I think |
Originally Posted by Carnifax_NA
I figured that's where everyone was hiding out.
Damn cool kids and their super-secret-hidden-clique-boards |
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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Nope, never heard of AE Monkey. He doesn't...fling things, does he? |
Forbin_Project has mistaken identity: If your Virtual Lad, who's running AE Monkey? I thought that was you.
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Dec out.
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Yeah I can see how one can easily come to that conclusion, but I was also drawing on some of the OP's responses I've seen in older doom threads.
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Originally Posted by Mental_Giant
From the context of the OP, I understood the "anemic state" as referring to the development of the game, not the perceived population.
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We're proving to the devs that the only chance for survival the game has is the Monkey Enema powerset.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Even if we could prove that City of Heroes is going down the drain, what are we trying to achieve by it?
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@Doctor Gemini
Arc #271637 - Welcome to M.A.G.I. - An alternative first story arc for magic origin heroes. At Hero Registration you heard the jokes about Azuria always losing things. When she loses the entire M.A.G.I. vault, you are chosen to find it.
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I'd still prefer Carp Melee.
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Originally Posted by Doctor_Gemini
We're proving to the devs that the only chance for survival the game has is the Monkey Enema powerset.
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Indeed, damn too-cool-for-school-Yuropeen-alternate me.|
Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Your Euro account would have gotten an invite, I think
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I hate that guy with his two 50s, Super-sekret-beta-invite and those Vet rewards, lording it over me. He even has the proper, non-suffixed version of my handle on these boards.
I hate you Yuropeen Carnifax. From hells heart I stab at thee.
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You can PM a Mod an ask them to change your forum name if you want to get rid of the "NA" part |
Originally Posted by Carnifax_NA
Indeed, damn too-cool-for-school-Yuropeen-alternate me.
I hate that guy with his two 50s, Super-sekret-beta-invite and those Vet rewards, lording it over me. He even has the proper, non-suffixed version of my handle on these boards. I hate you Yuropeen Carnifax. From hells heart I stab at thee. |
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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A few other big items are missing from folks' quick calculations. A business takes more than just salaries and one main cost to run. Worker benefits (insurance-health and maybe life, FICA, retirement pay-ins, commuter or exercise incentives), travel and registration for conventions, hero con (unless that is a money maker?? not sure how registration fees look for that), office expenses, utilities, leases, maintenance and custodial services, and interest owed on any (if any) loans. Probably others I'm forgetting. Sure any given item (other than space and worker benefits which is often a huge expense that scales with number of employees) might be negligible but they do add up. Taking a weak stab in the dark, you're looking at probably another $750k to $1.5 million for a company the size of PS.|
Originally Posted by Durakken
The only thing that really matter is business is that you are making more than 5% profit on your money and couldn't possibly put that somewhere else that would make more money and that's the catch with MMOs, once they are developed they are pretty much money machines and there is literally almost nothing that can make for a better investment or guarantee the same turn around on the investment.
how can we figure out roughly how much they are making? Let's say a server costs roughly $10,000 per month... There are 12-15 servers. That's 150,000 a month to run the servers... 1.8 mil at yearly cost. So if the game ever goes below that amount the servers will likely start merging and such >.> but long before that, the dev team will be cut as a previous calc puts that cost at a minimum of 4.8 million. This means that CoH roughly costs $6.6 million a year to run as it is now. So how much do they need to make for CoH to not be considered a good investment at this cost? $330,000 That means as long as the revenue is over $7m per year we aren't going to see much change as far as we are concerned as players. Also not to mention. A lot of that is considered a lost leader. Consider that the current cost of 4.8m is up from around 900k and if Paragon Studios really needed to I think the dev team would get shredded more before the servers are changed and as such the minimum revenue we before change is something like... $2,835,000 a year. So if you see that number in the per year value then you might need to start worrying, but until then you just sound like an idiot. |
Anyways, not going to claim to be an expert on this. I'm definitely not. But I do know that there are more in the expense column than just the salaries and the server costs (which some of you may have worked utilities and all related expenses for THOSE already into your estimates).
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There you go again. You've got your head in the sand thinking anyone wants Carp Melee. Everyone who's looking at what's really going on knows Monkey Enema is the answer.
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Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
I'd still prefer Carp Melee.
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@Doctor Gemini
Arc #271637 - Welcome to M.A.G.I. - An alternative first story arc for magic origin heroes. At Hero Registration you heard the jokes about Azuria always losing things. When she loses the entire M.A.G.I. vault, you are chosen to find it.
Carp Melee primary/Monkey Enema secondary!
EVERYONE'S HAPPY!
Dec out.
<QR>
I agree with the OP. Tomorrow's launch of GR will be huge and industry shaking. It will rock.
total kick to the gut
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.
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Seriously? Then I am very disappointed they haven't perma banned him and all his sock puppet accounts. |
Originally Posted by Lord_of_Time
You do realize that O_I is an alt account of Twixt? For anyone that knows that name I have to say no more. That explains the entire thread.
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total kick to the gut
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.
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ah Optimism, haven't seen you in a while |
Originally Posted by SwellGuy
<QR>
I agree with the OP. Tomorrow's launch of GR will be huge and industry shaking. It will rock. |
The above is only my opinion, please don't hate me for it
SG: Suicidal Maniacs @Aurealis
GhostRaptor: Server populations have been trending upwards since Issue 13 release. There are no current plans for any server mergers and we're looking forward to Issue 14 and the rest of the year.
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That doesn't matter.|
Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
Those weren't pre-orders they were pre-purchase. Money actually exchanged hands and goods/services were exchanged.
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We have contracts, we've been paid, and we've delivered SOME of the goods/services. We still have to wait until the month of actual delivery of the REST of the services before we can realize the earnings of it. Much the same can be applied to CoH/CoV. Their earnings for the quarter the pre-purchase applied to MIGHT not show the full weight of that pre-purchase. It might not make it into the quarterly report until the full product is released.
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I'm a fan of the game & I have high hopes for the expansion, but I dread extreme optimism.|
Originally Posted by SwellGuy
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I agree with the OP. Tomorrow's launch of GR will be huge and industry shaking. It will rock. |
This game is being released in a weak economy with low consumer spending and dreary forecasts. It never had even a tenth of the subscription base of the "industry leader" -- even if you count the populations of each only in the area of release that they share. In that perspective, it won't be "industry shaking."
It will, however, be very successful in its own right.
CoH was made with a fraction of the budget of other "leading" MMO's like Eq2, WoW, Age of Conan, Aion, LOTRO, and Warhammer Online-- and that made it's "modest by WoW standards" subscriber base give a very nice return on investment. Going Rogue would have been budgeted with that in mind. It will perform solidly for its market size, but it won't transform the MMO landscape (based on sales revenue and quarterly profits).
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I was exaggerating for comedic effect.|
Originally Posted by Chase_Arcanum
I'm a fan of the game & I have high hopes for the expansion, but I dread extreme optimism.
This game is being released in a weak economy with low consumer spending and dreary forecasts. It never had even a tenth of the subscription base of the "industry leader" -- even if you count the populations of each only in the area of release that they share. In that perspective, it won't be "industry shaking." It will, however, be very successful in its own right. CoH was made with a fraction of the budget of other "leading" MMO's like Eq2, WoW, Age of Conan, Aion, LOTRO, and Warhammer Online-- and that made it's "modest by WoW standards" subscriber base give a very nice return on investment. Going Rogue would have been budgeted with that in mind. It will perform solidly for its market size, but it won't transform the MMO landscape (based on sales revenue and quarterly profits). |
I gave it a "B" in some post somewhere around here.
total kick to the gut
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.
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While I don't doubt that they use pre-orders to predict the popularity of upcoming product releases, I have reservations that they count the money before the transactions are completed. To me that seems like very foolish behavior.
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Originally Posted by Chase_Arcanum
That doesn't matter.
We have contracts, we've been paid, and we've delivered SOME of the goods/services. We still have to wait until the month of actual delivery of the REST of the services before we can realize the earnings of it. Much the same can be applied to CoH/CoV. Their earnings for the quarter the pre-purchase applied to MIGHT not show the full weight of that pre-purchase. It might not make it into the quarterly report until the full product is released. |
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Precisely, |
Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
While I don't doubt that they use pre-orders to predict the popularity of upcoming product releases, I have reservations that they count the money before the transactions are completed. To me that seems like very foolish behavior.
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Yet some people looking at the quarterly reports have mentioned that a steeper decline may be masked by the people that bought into the 6/12 month promotions that quarter... or the pre-sales in other quarters.
If NCSoft, like my company, does NOT realize that revenue until the goods/service is provided, then you wouldn't see them credit all of my annual subscription right away. You'd see 3 months of it each quarter- ( and heck, due to the deal they provided, it would appear as DIMINISHED revenue that quarter, as the average monthly cost is substantially less than going per-month.) The pre-sales of GR likewise might not be appearing in that revenue report, but would be appearing in the Q3, once the expansion launches.
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In similar news, I hear Bill Gates' salary last year was $1!** Unbelievable! That must mean he's frequenting soup kitchens and living in a filthy box under a freeway somewhere!|
Originally Posted by Zubenelgenubi
Oh, I agree.
The elephant in this case being that in just one slow quarter they made enough money to cover salaries. Conservatively another quarter's revenue to cover all other expenses, leaving at least half the year's income as pure profit. So that's what, around $6 million in profit for the year? Yeah we better shut er down. $6 million isn't nearly enough money! |
** - this is a blatant, self-serving lie. I have no such knowledge, and I don't really care. It's a metaphor. Deal with it.
Arc #6015 - Coming Unglued
"A good n00b-sauce is based on a good n00b-roux." - The Masque
Oh noes! Here's proof that the servers are all ghost towns. The game is DOOMED! do you hear?
DOOMED!
DOOMED!
DOOMED!
Keep your fingers crossed there big guy, and maybe things will get worse like you keep saying.
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