NCSoft financials Q3 2012 are out.
I love that people think CoH has much...if any...impact on NCSoft stock. CoH represented such a minuscule part of NCsoft. When NCsoft stocks go back up (look at their trends over the years...this is quite common with them) who will take credit for that?
![]() BTW I hate the people who are crying out against Blade & Soul...for their costumes - have you seen some of the costumes people have made in CoH - NOT very family friendly. If you wanna bash Blade & Soul go right ahead but at least bash it for something that CoH was not guilty of as well...skintastic boobilicious costumes. CoH may have been rated T for teen...but that didn't stop the pedos and ERPers from infiltrating this "family friendly" game ![]() |
@Ashen Fury
Ashen Fury - KM/EA Scrapper
Erika Tempest - Ice/EM Tanker
Scion of Restoration - Emp/Sonic Defender
Goodbye may seem forever
Farewell is like the end
But in my heart's the memory
And there you'll always be
-- The Fox and the Hound
Lemons are tart. To suck lemons is to smile in a rather twisted way. Maybe it's English, not Physics.
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Arc: 379017: Outbroken See all your old friends in the Outbreak Tutorial sequel!
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Massively.com opinion poll: Please Help Save CoH!
Well as for the stock price, let's see. NCSoft released two games that quarter, a box game with a limited but pricey cash shop which you can avoid with enough grinding (GW2) and their heavily advertised Bounce & Strut, I mean Blade & Soul.
When Aion had it's first full quarter 1Q 2009, it added on top of the Lineage I+II revenues which remained flat. Regardless what they said in the conference call, it looks as if B&S simply sucked revenue from their other titles rather than adding new revenue.
As for GW2, it did very well for only being out for a third of the quarter but how consistent of a revenue stream do they expect from a box game? The original GW had good quarters only when a new expansion or combo box set hit the market in the first few years and then it dropped off. 4Q should be okay because of the holidays but when will the first paid expansion be coming out?
Stock plummeted because investors expected a much larger boost in the revenues, like what Aion did in 2009 but twice over because two new games. NCSoft's 800 billion 2012 annual sales estimate seems very unlikely with 650 to 700 billion a lot more likely and they already hit 650 billion once in 2010 so where's the revenue growth?
2011 was a disappointment and now even with two new games, 2012 isn't looking much better than 2010 in terms of sales. So those holding it expecting another huge revenue kick like Aion did are now dumping it. The volume of stock trading is 5 to 10 times normal so a lot of action today.
Still if you bought NCSoft at the start of 2009, the stock is still up over 3 1/2x.
And for a laugh you can check out the Google Translated Korean to Engrish (assuming you use Chrome) games news page from Korea's Money Today which includes a couple of posts about the NCSoft quarterly report. Nothing new there really.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
Goodbye may seem forever
Farewell is like the end
But in my heart's the memory
And there you'll always be
-- The Fox and the Hound
Not only does this game have lemonboob even on the lowest settings, in the beginning of CoH all female characters had hard nipples until the devs removed nipples altogether. So don't try pretending this game is innocent of doing the same thing as B&S.
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Blade & Soul, I'm not sure what's going on. There are curvy bunny girls in clothing several sizes too small that carry weapons that weigh more than they do... and some mouse children that throw magic cats at things or something. There's a male there but who the hell cares, am I right? What is the "soul" part of Blade & Soul? I see blades, they don't seem to be much more than an accessory.
And CoH does not have lemonboob. Anti-gravity melonboob maybe? Lemon definitely isn't the shape though. Also I think nipples still exist, or it could just be lighting and coloration making some tights look like they're still there.
Actually, due to a lot of costs associated with laying off those 80 people (by law they were all employed until 8 days ago so there was no savings PLUS severance pays) they saved nothing out of CoH's closure. They wont see any "positive" impact from CoH's cancelation until next quarter and that assumes they paid off every closure expense they had to during the previous month. I think there still will be some severance packages being offered in this next quarter, for the few staff members that will remain until shutdown.
The closure of this game would have the opposite effect. They lost more money, not less. Should the game be operating normally and players spent money in subscriptions and points things would have been better for them. The release of the new Bio power set and the new super pack was definitively going to have a small burst in profits for the quarter too; instead they were running CoH for the quarter at zero profit and still paying the non-working employees. I am sure they would have been at zero loss, or less than 100k in losses, should CoH not been killed. Given I think CoH was still (I think) bringing in about a million in profits per quarter, NCSoft would have seen no losses at all and instead seen some tiny profits. Mind you, I am not saying CoH was the only thing taking them down to a negative. The launch of GW2 likely involved an insane marketing budget, but thats something that would have happened regardless, and given the games main source of profit are sales its also something that cant be killed or even lowered without huge backlash in sales. Given CoH was profitable, they wont ever see a positive effect from dropping CoH, but they wont be over the costs of closure until Q1 2013. Another thing worries* me is that this quarter included the huge burst of profit from launching GW2. Sales of games ALWAYS drop after the first month, so those sales will not be as good for next quarter. What will keep things afloat then? I may be wrong, some other stuff may bring them some money. A Christmas miracle may bump GW2 sales for the one quarter. Or perhaps they will entirely kill marketing budget for GW2 (that may be stupid since the game can only make money as long as it sells new copies.) *To be honest, it does not worry me. They deserve all negative that comes to them. |
![Smile](images/smilies/smile.gif)
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Yeah, that'll be your region. I'm in Australia, which is also a pretty big blind spot for a lot of game developers. Guild Wars 2 I believe got a respectable showing over in the US, you know as much as AAA games that aren't big console headliners tend to get, but Blade and Soul, again, is only really out in Korea.
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I did catch the Guild Wars 2 "My Time Is Now" youtube video though.
Blade And Soul I would expect to see nothing for, because that is indeed only released in Korea right now.
However hard I've looked, I can't see anything in those numbers that says there's a hope in hell for CoH to get rescued. In fact it seems to inidcate that even the Save CoH campaign's been nothing but a slight annoyance.
![](http://repeat-offenders.net/savecoh/SaveCOH_Blue_leaderboard.jpg)
Thelonious Monk
I'm amused that any longtime CoH player would complain about the size of breasts in other MMOs.
I think the difference is that sexuality wasn't the driving force in CoH's promotional material, save for Sister Psyche and her tacky nipple pasty tights everything was the typical image of heroes and villains. You knew what the game was about, heroes doing hero things and villains doing villain things.
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Blade & Soul, I'm not sure what's going on. There are curvy bunny girls in clothing several sizes too small that carry weapons that weigh more than they do... and some mouse children that throw magic cats at things or something. There's a male there but who the hell cares, am I right? What is the "soul" part of Blade & Soul? I see blades, they don't seem to be much more than an accessory. |
Not only does this game have lemonboob even on the lowest settings, in the beginning of CoH all female characters had hard nipples until the devs removed nipples altogether. So don't try pretending this game is innocent of doing the same thing as B&S.
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Basically this:
![](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nosbk-7sr-c/SwZyYlJWUxI/AAAAAAAAGMk/yF0y1175gjU/s1600/blade_and_soul_art_4.jpg)
AT some point CoH had nipples but they were textures, nothing more. In this game you just had a chance to do rather flat boobs or basketball-shaped-gigant-boobs, but not lemon shaped ones.
Whoops, I confused NCSoft with NCSoft Interactive. I kept seeing the $400k loss mentioned.
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Let's look at NC Interactive which covers North America and NC Europe which ... well it's sort of obvious who they cover. Numbers in million KrW, first is Profit/Loss, second is sales.
NC Interactive
2006 -7,525 62,013
2007 7,509 55,562
2008 3,623 45,130
2009 -3,600 70,254
2010 -13,691 48,952
2011 -24,774 27,472
2012 -14,669 42,112 (only 3 quarters)
NC Europe
2006 614 30,081
2007 -56 27,506
2008 -7,105 22,456
2009 12,182 47,997
2010 1,592 34,275
2011 -7,538 17,928
2012 -1,681 24,512 (only 3 quarters)
P/L of all of NCSoft's subsidiaries combined
2006 -15,606
2007 -1,713
2008 -14,257
2009 17,125
2010 -7,823
2011 -26,363
2012 -20,714 (only 3 quarters)
To me it looks like Aion's success in 2009 caught NCSoft off guard and they couldn't figure out a way to raid those profits though creative accounting. For tax purposes of course.
![Wink](images/smilies/wink.gif)
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
Looks like the news hasn't gone down so well
![](http://repeat-offenders.net/savecoh/SaveCOH_Blue_leaderboard.jpg)
Thelonious Monk
Like I said earlier, I'm thinking investors expected B&S to add to the revenues like Aion did, not simply shift them from their other games.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
AT some point CoH had nipples but they were textures, nothing more. In this game you just had a chance to do rather flat boobs or basketball-shaped-gigant-boobs, but not lemon shaped ones.
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Hypothetical: CoH at minimum is A, B&S at minimum is DD. (Not actual sizes, exaggerated (possibly) just for example.). Then CoH "the game" can be compared to B&S "the game"
Hypothetical: CoH and B&S have minimums of A, and maximums of DD. (See previous disclaimers.) Then it's down to CoH Players versus B&S Players.
Does anyone know what the minimum sliders look like on B&S? CoH could go rather athletic (not entirely flat) at minimum. That'd be a more interesting comparison, as if B&S couldn't get down into average human range, then it's the designer's and game's choices, not the player's.
Hypothetical: CoH at minimum is A, B&S at minimum is DD. (Not actual sizes, exaggerated (possibly) just for example.). Then CoH "the game" can be compared to B&S "the game" Hypothetical: CoH and B&S have minimums of A, and maximums of DD. (See previous disclaimers.) Then it's down to CoH Players versus B&S Players. |
I think what we have seen so far are the defaults for every race.
I been googling around and so far have not seen anybody customization, everything I find seems to be on facial customization. There are some things I can't see due to work filters though, like youtube vidoes.
While googling up some information I found this interesting article, click image to go through:
Think it depends a lot on the race. There are some tiny "cute" baby looking race that seems to be rather flat-chested (and similiar to Tera's controversy "pedo bait" race)
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Found two rather longish videos on character creation in B&S for those interested in what extreme face/body editor could be like. You thought you can take a long time in the our editor, hah!
The game has preset models as well for each gender/class where the "normal" human sized female characters went from well endowed to "duck she's turning".
Video 1 - 11:47
Video 2 detailing changes from the latest patch. 6:01
Actually it looks like they have three or four sliders devoted to breasts. Size, spacing horizontally, location vertically and angle pointing apart (?!). Someone spent way too much time creating this.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
2 words. Cash. Shop. The box sales may dwindle on GW2 but depending on what they sell in their cash shop, that will more than make up for it.
GW1 had an in-game store, with the items being the same pretty much on the NC Soft store website, that were all pretty much a 1 time account unlock purchase. The only items you could purchase multiple times were character rename tokens and makeover kits to change your character appearance and/or gender. With GW2, I'm sure they have consumable items that players can purchase multiple times, which keeps revenue coming in. XP boosters and such. |
There are people in my guild and posting prominently on the forums and reddit who dropped $100 or so on gems for the Halloween event. LOTS of people did this. I was kinda boggled by it (nothing temporary interests me as a purchase - I want concrete things like bank/character slots, so for me the temp stuff gets a big "meh," as it did in COH.)
GW2 is releasing a major content update including a zone and a dungeon on November 16. Undoubtedly, there will be a bump in the cash shop for that.
Then we head into the winter holiday and whatever gambling/temp items they put in the cash shop for that.
I'm pretty sure GW2 is going to be able to float for quite a long time on their cash shop. Same way Paragon was doing just fine selling people powersets and costume sets without box sales or a sub.
I love that people think CoH has much...if any...impact on NCSoft stock. CoH represented such a minuscule part of NCsoft. When NCsoft stocks go back up (look at their trends over the years...this is quite common with them) who will take credit for that?![Wink](images/smilies/wink.gif)
BTW I hate the people who are crying out against Blade & Soul...for their costumes - have you seen some of the costumes people have made in CoH - NOT very family friendly. If you wanna bash Blade & Soul go right ahead but at least bash it for something that CoH was not guilty of as well...skintastic boobilicious costumes.
CoH may have been rated T for teen...but that didn't stop the pedos and ERPers from infiltrating this "family friendly" game