let's talk about Nexon 15% "majority shareholder" of NcSoft

Start near page 9 heroes.

https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=h...2885889107.pdf

I can't help but say TL;DR although this does look interesting

No smoking gun there.

• Nexon states that they have a 22% growth rate ignoring aquisitions and NCSoft has and develops great IP that Nexon may be able to leverage.
• There was some talk that North America is considered to be a growth market hampered by lack of affordable, available broadband.
• They believe the F2P with item shop model is the best was to make money off of online play.

I was amused that it was mentioned twice that they had Europe in a "bucket" of areas that also includes South America and Southeast Asia. Are those markets really similar enough to mix together in a bucket?

I think this just adds to the mystery really. If all the rumors about pulling out of the NA and European markets are false (assuming the CEO's comments were true), and their focus on F2P (CoH went F2P/microtransaction based) then the question about CoH is still kind of up in the air.

It cant be about broadband speed because CoH doesn't use a lot of bandwidth compared to current games (I would like to think anyways).. so if they're staying in NA and will continue to invest.. then what? Maybe they're just slimming down their portfolio?

I guess the only question is if they can be convinced to release the IP still. If CoH is one of the few "American" IP's they have something tells me it wont be easy to get it from them, they may just try and make a CoH2 in the future if they feel none of their Asian IP's are doing good here.

He also says "So, now that we've got our back end in much better position than it was a quarter or two ago, we've trimmed back the marketing
funnel, and we feel like we're in better shape there."

and I think that's where the disconnect is.. they don't understand how important advertising and marketing is in America. I've never seen any advertising for CoH outside of a few gaming websites. I would have never heard about it if not for a friend many years ago.

The only thing I see is that they keep saying their focus is on mobile games.
Which is why I understand the many questions regarding changing NC, because they do not have any mobile games.
HOWEVER, the answers to those questions seem to indicate that they do not intend to try and change NC except in terms of f2p....
Least, that's what I garnered, corporate speak is a bit of a foreign language to me.

I also agree with Briggs. They do not understand the importance of advertising over here.
I understand trimming advertising budgets, or getting creative with advertising, but you can't just cut it out completely and expect your products to sell.
.

Those were the CFO comments of Nexon. He is talking about Nexon's plans and Nexon's point of view when it comes to NA and EU. Nexon doesn't run NCSoft.

When first asked about the NCSoft stock buy the CFO states "have not announced any specific plans". When pressed the CEO spews the standard spiel about "working together on future opportunities ... leverage our specific strengths" yada yada yada.

Their comments on the American market place centered on the F2P MMO gaming model that all Nexon games is built on. They only mentioned NCSoft in passing about using NCSoft's expertise in making a high quality game that Nexon could push as F2P. There is no mention of GW2 but I'm sure Nexon is looking for a game IP like that, except totally F2P.

Now since Nexon's business model is that of only a downloadable game client coupled with a cash money shop, America not having universally available, inexpensive broadband is a problem for them when it comes to growing the business here. Many of you may think broadband internet is common place in the US like electricity, telephone and water but according to the latest FCC report in August, 38% of Americans don't have it and 6% of Americans can't even get it. And if they can get it but choose not to, it's likely because it's horribly expensive. Median broadband cost in the US is $5.42 per Mbit/s while the median cost in Korea is only $0.33. And that $5.42 is a bit deceiving because lower speed plans are considerably more than that (3Mbit/s DSL or cable plans by my parents are in the $35-40 a month range so $12+ per Mbit/s).

I have no idea where you are all getting the idea from that transcript that Nexon pushed NCSoft into this.

Well whatever went down there was a shareholder shift that resulted in (or was perhaps a symptom of) a poorly planned restructuring effort that resulted in this:

http://www.vgchartz.com/article/2503...ss-since-2006/

That's right. Too much money spent in the short term letting people go. So what did they do? They let Paragon go. WTF?!