2010 4Q earnings

Well, hey, eventually they'll be right. Just keep predicting it'll end in two years, and at some point, it will.

I've been here 3 years now and I see a lot of people; more than I have in a long time. The multiple zones thin out the population (1 reason). I think the game is doing OK. I also don't think there are only 65K subs. I thought it was double but we are not given these numbers.

Anyway. it's too bad the game didn't do better but that is expected. It is older and not well known. GR seems to have brought in a lot of people but not a huge #. It seems the devs also do not tend to add complete different content so the game suffers from repetition.

I don't have high hopes for the next issue or two, unfortunately. Whenever we were told something BIG was coming...it didn't. Perhaps a better line of communication and cooperation with the player base may help guide the additions to the game.

Finally, I hope this game is profitable enough so it sticks around for a long time. There is so much potential here and I hope it is realized sooner rather than later.

meanwhile one of NCsofts other games...is doing stupidly well for being almost twice as old as CoH/V

Hrm? What brought that spike of earnings in Q3 '10?

Oh wait, that was the Going Rogue release, wasn't it? Hrm, not bad.

edit: blah slow typing

Also, if you actually look at the numbers on the chart, CoH has almost always been somewhere between 5500 and 7000 of what I assume to be millions of Won. There was a HUGE spike for CoV, but it's otherwise been fairly stable. The gradual downslide throughout 2009 and 2010 matches up fairly well with the global economy going in the tank and the US dollar losing strength.

Sales of the Going Rogue expansion provided a healthy boost for the 3rd quarter of 2010, but the drop back down in the 4th quarter suggests that GR didn't really attract substantial numbers of new players. While disappointing, it really wasn't unexpected as any MMO this old NOT named World of Warcraft usually rely on retention of existing playerbase as opposed to influx of new players. Thankfully, CoH has always had a fairly low churn rate.

It's still a little too early to be calling DOOM on CoH. We really need to see what kind of pattern the 2011 numbers start falling into.

I predict F2P in the next year or two. A good thing, IMO - it seems to work well for other MMOs.

Seems a lot of you guys are forgetting something... The release of a major Super Hero MMO that was targeted to kill CoH. It didn't.

Missing estimates is bad. Typically when that happens, people lose jobs to make up the difference. City of Heroes is in a unique spot for NC Soft. They like it because it gives them a US foothold (just like Guild Wars) and is a stable money maker (just like Guild Wars). The numbers you see for games like Linage aren't expected for CoH. Different market.

Subscriptions, I estimate, are around 45k. Again, stable for the past several years and impressive considering new competition. People are playing and they're playing a lot. You have to remember we're divided up between a lot of servers, zones, play times, and instances. Server loads are reflecting players, even if you feel like you can't get a team.

There's no doom for the game in these figures. We might lose some more staff, which is never good.

Exactly.

If Going Rogue did nothing but keep a large chunk of people that were about to leave hanging around and resubbing, and only brought in a few new people, it did it's job.

Expansions usually aren't designed for new players. They're to give the long time players something new to do, and to advertise to the rest of the gaming community that "Hey, we're still around." CoH 2...now that would be something aimed at a new audience. Updated engine and graphics, different game mechanics, but with the same IP.