NC Soft's BIG MISTAKE
By
Another_Fan,
Posted on: 2012-11-17 06:31 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
very good article. basically i guess NCSoft enjoys shooting themselves in the foot for pulling the plug on CoH. at least they are helping out the other game companies out there by kicking there current CoH customers to the curb like they have.
@Eternal Twilight
Friends don't let friends buy an NCSoft controlled project.
Save Paragon one more time!
http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index....ic,4877.0.html
Petition to end shutting down CoH:
http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes
Old article. They're even worse now.
http://www.reuters.com/finance/stock...mbol=036570.KS
They're lower, right now, than they've been since April 21st 2010.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
As much as it pains me to say so, the price of a company's stock is only an indication of what people are guessing it'll be worth in the future. And while you'd like to believe that investors are completely logical on this, emotion plays a big role, particularly in driving panics.
So once a company takes a big drop, the stock will often keep falling much further because stockholders see the price dropping and want to sell. (Financial analysts make sheep look like independent thinkers).
So while I'll admit I am taking some pleasure in the decline of NCSoft stock and even have a bit of hope that, in the search for "good news" to change the mindset of shareholders they may announce a sale of a worthless asset, don't assume that the continued decline means that the company's strength has proportionally declined.
My arcs are constantly shifting, just search for GadgetDon for the latest.
The world beware! I've started a blog
GadgetMania Under Attack: The Digg Lockout
The thing is... in GW2 they have a big hit. Their stock peaked just after the GW2 launch - despite the announcement of the closure of CoH
But since AP33 the price has gone down. Blade & Soul (BS for short) is not being well received in the West, and their financials for Q3 show they are a company that is out of touch with its marketplace.
It's not a single event, but a conflation of several distinct issues, all very poorly managed by an aloof corporation with questionable competence.
Thelonious Monk
Calling Father Xmas, Father Xmas to this thread...
Their 'BIG MISTAKE' was selling their investors the sun, the stars, the moon, and the Voyager spacecraft on how Blade & Soul and Guild Wars 2 were gonna sell. Sales failed to meet way too lofty projections, and....
"Sell! Sell! Sell!"
Blood Widow Ricki * Tide Shifter * T-34 * Opposite Reaction * Shaolin Midnight * ChernobylCheerleader
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
Old article. They're even worse now.
http://www.reuters.com/finance/stock...mbol=036570.KS They're lower, right now, than they've been since April 21st 2010. |
Those trends are steeper than an Alpine slope!
"Samual_Tow - Be disappointed all you want, people. You just don't appreciate the miracles that are taking place here."
I wonder how much CoH will go for if they have to liquidate.
Quote:
Remember SWTOR at the launch? Everything skyrockets, they broke records, they made it all. Look at it today, a pinch of what it once was, even their f2p system is borked at all places.|
Originally Posted by Scarlet Shocker
The thing is... in GW2 they have a big hit. Their stock peaked just after the GW2 launch - despite the announcement of the closure of CoH
But since AP33 the price has gone down. Blade & Soul (BS for short) is not being well received in the West, and their financials for Q3 show they are a company that is out of touch with its marketplace. It's not a single event, but a conflation of several distinct issues, all very poorly managed by an aloof corporation with questionable competence. |
GW2 might be a huge launch (hell it been 'in the news' for 5 years), i highly doubt if they can keep up the succes as they once did with GW1 (though in numbers they never could beat GW2, but in continuation, they probably will).
B&S personaly is too late, there are tons of new games ready from Asia that first have to go through all the translation and stuff, but they are already done. B&S is yet to start, where the other games continue and take the customers they should have taken (hell, even Cabal2 is comming).
They got 3 games on a huge risk how they will succeed, GW2 might have done 'ok', i dont see Wildstar or B&S making the same succes. Then they kill of 1 of their few games who maintained a stable playerbase, not to compete with the 'big names' (sorry, DCU or CO wont cut it) and would have kept going for quite some time.
50)Sinergy X/(50)Mika.
(50)MaceX/(50)Encore
Sign the petition, dont let CoH go down! SIGN!
Personally I think that it's a tough world for big MMORPG publishers out there these days. Too many investors seem to want the 'big new MMORPG' to be a WoW killer, but I think it's becoming more and more apparent that just won't happen in the current climate. There's just too much competition in the marketplace for a newcomer to get that big, competition both from other MMORPGs and the ever-increasing online components of what would have been offline games in the past.
To my mind the future of the MMORPG is more along the lines of relatively niche product stuff along with concepts such as what Arcanaville posted a while back as a CoH what-if suggestion, an MMORPG that allows shifting between degrees of online and offline play.
Niche just doesn't fit the modern popular definition of business though. A stable business has becoming nothing, even being called a poor business. It's only a business if it is always growing (or at least trying to). Niche 'anything' doesn't work for that.
Of course it does. Niche products succeed all the time in most every industry, that's why we see so many casual and independent game operators doing well these days (and a lot doing less well too of course). Niche doesn't mean unprofitable in any sense. It just means that not everything is going to have the mass market appeal to be the next WoW or Call of Duty or Diablo.
Niche doesn't even mean that something has to stop growing either (although on a tangent I think the Global Financial Crisis is ultimately going to cause many to question the 'grow, grow, grow' approach). If you concentrate on making niche games you don't have to just concentrate on one niche and you can still get the word out and grow over time with older games too.
Quote:
Very sadly, and misguidedly, true (as you well know). |
Originally Posted by TimTheEnchanter
Niche just doesn't fit the modern popular definition of business though. A stable business has becoming nothing, even being called a poor business. It's only a business if it is always growing (or at least trying to). Niche 'anything' doesn't work for that.
|
Perhaps, one day, it will come back to a climate where the success of profiting from the satisfaction of "small", steady niche customers will be recognized.
You almost can feel a shift in a few areas along these lines... But I think it is more of a fringe and not in the realm of the kind of sustained finances game publishers are currently caught within.
@Zethustra
"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
I have to agree that the future of MMOs is the interaction between online and offline gameplay. On top of that, if there were a way of intertwining social networking into the game world, you could social portals like FB and Twitter be portals to your game.
"Samual_Tow - Be disappointed all you want, people. You just don't appreciate the miracles that are taking place here."
Quote:
I had thought of tha too, the idea of having a bunch of niche games, one each targeting a different demographic. Somehow that too is looked down upon as inefficient. "Why not just have a big one, and target the widest demographic possible?" That would be bad enough in a different branch of entertainment or video games. But as long as WoW is out there to make everyone drool, it's going to lure people into trying to achieve that same level of success. Even EA practically killed themselves chasing after El Dorado.|
Originally Posted by Iron_Emerald
Of course it does. Niche products succeed all the time in most every industry, that's why we see so many casual and independent game operators doing well these days (and a lot doing less well too of course). Niche doesn't mean unprofitable in any sense. It just means that not everything is going to have the mass market appeal to be the next WoW or Call of Duty or Diablo.
Niche doesn't even mean that something has to stop growing either (although on a tangent I think the Global Financial Crisis is ultimately going to cause many to question the 'grow, grow, grow' approach). If you concentrate on making niche games you don't have to just concentrate on one niche and you can still get the word out and grow over time with older games too. |
And: wow... I just realized that somehow half of my original post isn't there, merging pieces of two of my sentences and making the whole thing look REALLY weird.
Quote:
Well, that's because it *is* inefficient. It will always cost less to run 1 game with 10x customers than 10 games with 1x customers. And as 'x' gets smaller, the cost differential becomes greater...
|
Originally Posted by TimTheEnchanter
I had thought of tha too, the idea of having a bunch of niche games, one each targeting a different demographic. Somehow that too is looked down upon as inefficient. "Why not just have a big one, and target the widest demographic possible?" That would be bad enough in a different branch of entertainment or video games. But as long as WoW is out there to make everyone drool, it's going to lure people into trying to achieve that same level of success. Even EA practically killed themselves chasing after El Dorado.
And: wow... I just realized that somehow half of my original post isn't there, merging pieces of two of my sentences and making the whole thing look REALLY weird. |
Quote:
How lucky for everyone who isn't an impulsive teenager.
|
Originally Posted by Brillig
Well, that's because it *is* inefficient. It will always cost less to run 1 game with 10x customers than 10 games with 1x customers. And as 'x' gets smaller, the cost differential becomes greater...
|
Quote:
Sure, but my point is that the chasing after WoW isn't something that I think can work. It's not how big companies are working these days, but I don't believe that traditional MMORPG's are going to be successful long term for anyone who isn't interested in niche games. How many more big companies are going to take a tilt at that WoW player base before they make the conclusion that it will never move en masse? Or if it does it will only be to a new Blizzard game? |
Originally Posted by TimTheEnchanter
I had thought of tha too, the idea of having a bunch of niche games, one each targeting a different demographic. Somehow that too is looked down upon as inefficient. "Why not just have a big one, and target the widest demographic possible?" That would be bad enough in a different branch of entertainment or video games. But as long as WoW is out there to make everyone drool, it's going to lure people into trying to achieve that same level of success. Even EA practically killed themselves chasing after El Dorado.
And: wow... I just realized that somehow half of my original post isn't there, merging pieces of two of my sentences and making the whole thing look REALLY weird. |
And even now the thinking you indicate is only really prevalent for 'triple A' games. Plenty of game companies go out to make a game with a narrower focus, and I predict that most traditional MMOs will come from those sources. I also suspect Triple A MMO style games will become more and more of an online/offline blend.
Quote:
Well, so here's the thing. In the real world, one of the main reasons niche products survive is that their customers are willing to pay a premium for them. Why isn't this true of MMOs?
|
Originally Posted by TimTheEnchanter
How lucky for everyone who isn't an impulsive teenager.
|
Quote:
It's only inefficient if you're targeting the same group of customers each time. In many cases it isn't possible to get 10x customers all playing the same game. You might make a boxing game that gets x customers and a chess game that gets x customers. That doesn't mean a boxing & chess game would get 2x and be the more efficient choice.
|
Originally Posted by Brillig
Well, that's because it *is* inefficient. It will always cost less to run 1 game with 10x customers than 10 games with 1x customers. And as 'x' gets smaller, the cost differential becomes greater...
|
Quote:
An interesting question, but who knows if it's even true that they wouldn't? I don't believe any company has ever tried it, unless you want to count "lifetime memberships." But I've seen those as more being about inflating initial sales, rather than trying to extend long-term viability.
|
Originally Posted by Brillig
Well, so here's the thing. In the real world, one of the main reasons niche products survive is that their customers are willing to pay a premium for them. Why isn't this true of MMOs?
|
$15/mo for seven years, $15/mo for a second account for six years, box expansions for each account, assorted booster packs...I don't know, but that seems to be a fair premium.
/would have been much better off financially just playing the dickens out of the Civ series
Suggestions:
Super Packs Done Right
Influence Sink: IO Level Mod/Recrafting
Random Merit Rolls: Scale cost by Toon Level
Quote:
Star Citizen is definitely looking like what you're talking about. I'm not so sure it will be a success in terms of monetization though.
|
Originally Posted by Iron_Emerald
Sure, but my point is that the chasing after WoW isn't something that I think can work. It's not how big companies are working these days, but I don't believe that traditional MMORPG's are going to be successful long term for anyone who isn't interested in niche games. How many more big companies are going to take a tilt at that WoW player base before they make the conclusion that it will never move en masse? Or if it does it will only be to a new Blizzard game?
And even now the thinking you indicate is only really prevalent for 'triple A' games. Plenty of game companies go out to make a game with a narrower focus, and I predict that most traditional MMOs will come from those sources. I also suspect Triple A MMO style games will become more and more of an online/offline blend. |
Quote:
Yeah, lifetime memberships are a totally different direction, they're actually *bad* for a niche game, imo - to succeed, a niche game needs a rabid fan base willing to pay a premium for many many months/years.|
Originally Posted by TimTheEnchanter
An interesting question, but who knows if it's even true that they wouldn't? I don't believe any company has ever tried it, unless you want to count "lifetime memberships." But I've seen those as more being about inflating initial sales, rather than trying to extend long-term viability.
|
As to whether it's been tried... I don't know how many companies have looked in to it. I do know that Turbine did a customer survey at one point, back when DDO was flailing, asking some interesting questions about whether I would want a DDO server with custom rules or premium support/GM events, how much would I pay for such a server etc...
Obviously, nothing came of that other than the move to F2P, but I thought it was interesting that they at least investigated the possibility.
Unfortunately, we'll never be able to get at it, but this data exists for CoH. You could data mine and figure out if the CoH subscribers (pre-F2P) ended up paying more or less, on average, after F2P launched.
Quote:
It's probably true to an extent here. I know that if such a contribution from myself and others would save our game, I'd drop $300 today. I would have loved to see a lifetime sub to this game. They would still have gotten my money because I bought a lot more in the store than a monthly stipend covered. I hardly ever had a sub going but I had everything in every reward tier and still continued to buy points in the store, so I largely didn't need a sub. That's where they made their money from me, and it definitely averaged out to more than $15 a month.
|
Originally Posted by Brillig
Well, so here's the thing. In the real world, one of the main reasons niche products survive is that their customers are willing to pay a premium for them. Why isn't this true of MMOs?
|
As it turns out, their parachute was a nap sack.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/49736295
Target Zero- Scrapper (dark/dark)
Nemesis Zero- MM (Merc/Dark)
Poprock- brute (Stone/stone)
Junglier- Dominator (Plant/thorn)
Nexus Zero- (Warshade)
Invulnerable Edge- Tanker (Inv/dual blade)