analyst: Q4 2012 said to be a great quarter for ncsoft

Nadia · December 2012

wont see the official report until Feb 2013

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/12/30/korean-analysts-predict-guild-wars-2-expansion-in-2013/

The (analyst) firm notes that Q4 was an excellent quarter for the company, with a big upswing in operational profits mostly credited to Guild Wars 2. The firm goes on to predict that the market in North America and Europe will be the most lucrative for the company, and based on a recent visit to NCsoft's headquarters

http://www.kdbdw.com/bbs/board/message/view.do?messageId=182267&messageNumber=25&messageCategoryId=0&startId=zzzzz~&startPage=1&curPage=1&searchType=2&searchText=NCSoft&searchStartYear=2011&searchStartMonth=12&searchStartDay=30&searchEndYear=2012&searchEndMonth=12&searchEndDay=29&lastPageFlag=&categoryId=76

4Q OP to reach a historic high

We recently visited NCsoft and came away confident that 4Q OP is likely to reach a record high of more than W100bn. Based on our conversation with the management, we estimate Guild Wars 2 sales at W118bn in 4Q (vs. W46bn in 3Q) and Lineage I sales at W63bn (vs. W38bn in 3Q). Meanwhile, we believe sales of Aion, Lineage II, and Blade & Soul are likely to remain flat QoQ. We forecast 4Q revenues to expand 51% to W275bn and OP to jump 101% QoQ to W102bn, despite a one-off expense (W15bn) related to the sponsorship of a baseball team.

Alot · December 2012

Originally posted by Torvaldr
This is great news. The Q3 results held this sort of foreshadowing, but the Q4 support this.
It's no surprise to me that GW2 is actually as successful as it is despite the odd spin to the contrary. What is surprising is that BnS is flat. It's also wildly successful and holding flat is pretty good, but I had anticipated it growing some and receiving a more prominent mention.
The one anomoly that I really love in the article(s) is that Lineage is still going so strong. The game, after all this time, is still pulling in more revenue than most western games, except WoW of course, and more than any other game of its generation. We often hear about UO and EQ in the "old guard" but Lineage never gets the credit it deserves. Of any old game I really wish that NCSoft would bring Lineage back to the west. Maybe a 2.5d isometric game can't succeed over here anymore, but I certainly miss that title. Maybe ArcheAge will be the 21st century replacement.

But ArcheAge wasn't 2.5d isometric last time I checked, or am I wrong?

Edit: I just read the article on Massively and I'm surprised to read that big analysts such as KDB Daewoo are already expecting an expansion to hit next year.

Omali · December 2012

Originally posted by Torvaldr
This is great news. The Q3 results held this sort of foreshadowing, but the Q4 support this.

It's no surprise to me that GW2 is actually as successful as it is despite the odd spin to the contrary. What is surprising is that BnS is flat. It's also wildly successful and holding flat is pretty good, but I had anticipated it growing some and receiving a more prominent mention.

The one anomoly that I really love in the article(s) is that Lineage is still going so strong. The game, after all this time, is still pulling in more revenue than most western games, except WoW of course, and more than any other game of its generation. We often hear about UO and EQ in the "old guard" but Lineage never gets the credit it deserves. Of any old game I really wish that NCSoft would bring Lineage back to the west. Maybe a 2.5d isometric game can't succeed over here anymore, but I certainly miss that title. Maybe ArcheAge will be the 21st century replacement.

Lineage Eternal is in development and will be a 2.5d isometric game along the lines of Lineage 1.

KingJiggly · December 2012

Originally posted by Alot

Originally posted by Torvaldr
This is great news. The Q3 results held this sort of foreshadowing, but the Q4 support this.

It's no surprise to me that GW2 is actually as successful as it is despite the odd spin to the contrary. What is surprising is that BnS is flat. It's also wildly successful and holding flat is pretty good, but I had anticipated it growing some and receiving a more prominent mention.

The one anomoly that I really love in the article(s) is that Lineage is still going so strong. The game, after all this time, is still pulling in more revenue than most western games, except WoW of course, and more than any other game of its generation. We often hear about UO and EQ in the "old guard" but Lineage never gets the credit it deserves. Of any old game I really wish that NCSoft would bring Lineage back to the west. Maybe a 2.5d isometric game can't succeed over here anymore, but I certainly miss that title. Maybe ArcheAge will be the 21st century replacement.

But ArcheAge wasn't 2.5d isometric last time I checked, or am I wrong?

Edit: I just read the article on Massively and I'm surprised to read that big analysts such as KDB Daewoo are already expecting an expansion to hit next year.

I saw that too and was like O.O

Fix what is wrong with the game now... then maybe in like 2-3 years release expansion. This... is just too much.

fiontar · December 2012

Converted to $US, that would be over $110Million that GW2 raked in for Q4! I'm going to guess a fair portion is from the gem store. I know I've been spending more than I intended, so it's a good thing I'm still loving playing the game.

TheQuinch · December 2012

Call me biased, but given that NCsoft still hasn't recovered from their September plummet, stockbrokers aren't very convinced, regardless of what the analysts say. Keep in mind that Guild Wars 2 was a one-time burst and continued income from it depends on players willingness to keep up with the Joneses through gem purchases.

Lord.Bachus · December 2012

Originally posted by TheQuinch
Call me biased, but given that NCsoft still hasn't recovered from their September plummet, stockbrokers aren't very convinced, regardless of what the analysts say. Keep in mind that Guild Wars 2 was a one-time burst and continued income from it depends on players willingness to keep up with the Joneses through gem purchases.

GW2 will have continuous income from releases in other regions, the gemstore probably making just as much money as any subbed game, and the anuall expansions thta add to the profit every year from now.

GW2 is here to stay

TheQuinch · December 2012

Maybe, but again, there's only so many regions to release in and the biggest ones have been covered in the first wave {Asia/US}. As for the gemstore, that depends on the location - financially, GW1 and GW2 have been advertised at a "buy once, play forever" price. If the gemstore purchases start being seen as a pay2win requirement, that might snap back pretty badly.

nastyjman · December 2012

Originally posted by TheQuinch
Call me biased, but given that NCsoft still hasn't recovered from their September plummet, stockbrokers aren't very convinced, regardless of what the analysts say. Keep in mind that Guild Wars 2 was a one-time burst and continued income from it depends on players willingness to keep up with the Joneses through gem purchases.

Agree. If GW2 becomes greedy and starts to gouge people through Black Lion Chests, people will leave in droves. Wintersday showed an improvement compared to Halloween. Mini-pets were obtainable by playing the game, but also offered purchase in BLTC. Also, in-game skins were obtainable and unique compared to the BLTC offering. The chests on Wintersday was purely optional, but the drop-rate of coveted items were .003%~.005%. IMO, the Black Lion Chests should go -- or at least reduce the price of keys.

More cosmetic items, mini-pets, and, hopefully, musical instruments, may keep it stabilized. Also, once guild housing and player housing is implemented, I think the playerbase is willing to spend a little cash for furniture or an ingredient (ala Mystic Stone) to craft furniture.

Gaia_Hunter · December 2012

Originally posted by TheQuinch
Maybe, but again, there's only so many regions to release in and the biggest ones have been covered in the first wave {Asia/US}. As for the gemstore, that depends on the location - financially, GW1 and GW2 have been advertised at a "buy once, play forever" price. If the gemstore purchases start being seen as a pay2win requirement, that might snap back pretty badly.

It was EU/US no US/ASIA.

China will be released next year.

And I don't think GW2 has a korean localization.

niceguy3978 · December 2012

Originally posted by fiontar
Converted to $US, that would be over $110Million that GW2 raked in for Q4! I'm going to guess a fair portion is from the gem store. I know I've been spending more than I intended, so it's a good thing I'm still loving playing the game.

I really hope they break this down between how much was in additional copies sold of the game and how much was gem sales. I seriously doubt they will do this as they didn't on the Q4 report.

fiontar · January 2013

Originally posted by Lord.Bachus
Originally posted by TheQuinch
Call me biased, but given that NCsoft still hasn't recovered from their September plummet, stockbrokers aren't very convinced, regardless of what the analysts say. Keep in mind that Guild Wars 2 was a one-time burst and continued income from it depends on players willingness to keep up with the Joneses through gem purchases.

GW2 will have continuous income from releases in other regions, the gemstore probably making just as much money as any subbed game, and the anuall expansions thta add to the profit every year from now.

GW2 is here to stay

I really doubt that more than half of the $110 million of GW2 revenue this quarter was from unit sales. The game has some churn, so I accept that there have been a healthy amount of new box sales to account for current server population impressions. However, I think at least half that revenue is from the Gem Store. (Even if each unit sold generated $60 of revenue, which it doesn't, half the revenue from unit sales would mean over 1 million new box sales after the game's launch).

I've always said that GW2 is the type of game that can continue to sell copies, on an ongoing basis, at a healthy clip. All the Game of the Year and MMO of the Year awards will attract a lot of new customers in the coming year, as will word of mouth. However, Gem Store revenues are the key for making up for no subscription fee. If more than half the projected revenue was from gem sales, then the business model is off to a very good start.

Prenho · January 2013

Originally posted by Torvaldr
This is great news. The Q3 results held this sort of foreshadowing, but the Q4 support this.

It's no surprise to me that GW2 is actually as successful as it is despite the odd spin to the contrary. What is surprising is that BnS is flat. It's also wildly successful and holding flat is pretty good, but I had anticipated it growing some and receiving a more prominent mention.

The one anomoly that I really love in the article(s) is that Lineage is still going so strong. The game, after all this time, is still pulling in more revenue than most western games, except WoW of course, and more than any other game of its generation. We often hear about UO and EQ in the "old guard" but Lineage never gets the credit it deserves. Of any old game I really wish that NCSoft would bring Lineage back to the west. Maybe a 2.5d isometric game can't succeed over here anymore, but I certainly miss that title. Maybe ArcheAge will be the 21st century replacement.

I agree Lineage 1 should come back to west, Lineage Eternal only in 2014 - 2015 in Korea, in west... 2016.

Prenho · January 2013

Originally posted by Torvaldr
Not to derail, but...

I think Lineage Eternal will be a fun game, and it does succeed the IP. But it doesn't seem the spiritual successor of the game. Jake Song created Lineage and is working on ArcheAge. All the things I read about ArcheAge seem to be what Jake Song couldn't do with Lineage due to technical limitations at the time it was published (late 90s).

More on topic...

It's interesting to see the predictions about the expansion as well. I seriously doubt ANet and NCSoft are sitting on their laurels with this one. An opportunity like this doesn't come around that often. They should run with it.

My problem with Archeage is that it has 3 factions, from what I understood, the only difference if that you can kill faction members, but th pk system used didn't please me, do you go to jail?

Why didn't Jake Song use a pk system like de did in L1? It works perfectly, the best pk system ever.

Why didn't he make a clan-alliance based game, where the own players make their own allies and anemies instead of 3 static factions?

TERA online had a great hype for all owpvp players, but it ended up being a themepark, and it will go F2P in east, 100% carebear. And I somehow feel as if Archeage could have this same fate.

bcbully · January 2013

Originally posted by Nadia
wont see the official report until Feb 2013

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/12/30/korean-analysts-predict-guild-wars-2-expansion-in-2013/

The (analyst) firm notes that Q4 was an excellent quarter for the company, with a big upswing in operational profits mostly credited to Guild Wars 2. The firm goes on to predict that the market in North America and Europe will be the most lucrative for the company, and based on a recent visit to NCsoft's headquarters

http://www.kdbdw.com/bbs/board/message/view.do?messageId=182267&messageNumber=25&messageCategoryId=0&startId=zzzzz~&startPage=1&curPage=1&searchType=2&searchText=NCSoft&searchStartYear=2011&searchStartMonth=12&searchStartDay=30&searchEndYear=2012&searchEndMonth=12&searchEndDay=29&lastPageFlag=&categoryId=76

4Q OP to reach a historic high

We recently visited NCsoft and came away confident that 4Q OP is likely to reach a record high of more than W100bn. Based on our conversation with the management, we estimate Guild Wars 2 sales at W118bn in 4Q (vs. W46bn in 3Q) and Lineage I sales at W63bn (vs. W38bn in 3Q). Meanwhile, we believe sales of Aion, Lineage II, and Blade & Soul are likely to remain flat QoQ. We forecast 4Q revenues to expand 51% to W275bn and OP to jump 101% QoQ to W102bn, despite a one-off expense (W15bn) related to the sponsorship of a baseball team.

Yeah I saw that. The crazy thing is, even with that report NCsoft stock continued to fall. The stock is at it's low point for the year, maybe all time low. Investors don't seem to be buying what the article is selling.

jtcgs · January 2013

Guys, try to keep in mind that Guild Wars 1 had 6 MILLION players worldwide at its peak.

There is no reason at all for Guild Wars 2 not to top 3-4 million in sales easy once its out worldwide....

Fluxii · January 2013

You barely see anyone looking for PUG's in LA and overflow anymore at peak times. And overflow takes about 2 seconds to get out of if there is one (and I'm on one of the busier, well, highest ranked servers).

But keep telling yourselves there's TONS of people playing and dumping money into the game...

No, as an above poster said... that was a one time huge injection. Sure money will still trickle in, but the HUGE sale they had on the game alone over the holiday showed they were trying to grab as many players as they could already. That's a big cut into their profits if they didn't need the people.

In a conversation the other day, a bunch of people were going back and forth about the game and one thing someone said struck me as funny...

"at launch I would have given the game a 4.5/5, now I'd give it a 3/5 at best". How does that happen? All they've done is added things? Yet you like the game less now? Maybe the game wasn't all that in the first place.

I like the game, I just hate the Fanboi's that for the last year and STILL have to keep trying to prove SO HARD something about this game that just isn't there.

EDIT for speilin

aionix · January 2013

Originally posted by Fluxii
You barely see anyone looking for PUG's in LA and overflow anymore at peak times. And overflow takes about 2 seconds to get out of if there is one (and I'm on one of the busier, well, highest ranked servers).

But keep telling yourselves there's TONS of people playing and dumping money into the game...

No, as an above poster said... that was a one time huge injection. Sure money will still trickle in, but the HUGE sale they had on the game alone over the holiday showed they were trying to grab as many players as they could already. That's a big cut into their profits if they didn't need the people.

In a conversation the other day, a bunch of people were going back and forth about the game and one thing someone said struck me as funny...

"at launch I would have given the game a 4.5/5, now I'd give it a 3/5 at best". How does that happen? All they've done is added things? Yet you like the game less now? Maybe the game wasn't all that in the first place.

I like the game, I just hate the Fanboi's that for the last year and STILL have to keep trying to prove SO HARD something about this game that just isn't there.

EDIT for speilin

I agre with what you said except you forgot to take into account why people are talking less in LA. This right here:

http://gw2lfg.com/

With the ability to get people cross server, its quicker than spamming LA chat looking for PUGs. This tool should be incorporated into the game, sadly the servers are cut off from one another communication wise for PvE and that is a design flaw.

azzamasin · January 2013

Originally posted by Fluxii
You barely see anyone looking for PUG's in LA and overflow anymore at peak times. And overflow takes about 2 seconds to get out of if there is one (and I'm on one of the busier, well, highest ranked servers).

But keep telling yourselves there's TONS of people playing and dumping money into the game...

No, as an above poster said... that was a one time huge injection. Sure money will still trickle in, but the HUGE sale they had on the game alone over the holiday showed they were trying to grab as many players as they could already. That's a big cut into their profits if they didn't need the people.

In a conversation the other day, a bunch of people were going back and forth about the game and one thing someone said struck me as funny...

"at launch I would have given the game a 4.5/5, now I'd give it a 3/5 at best". How does that happen? All they've done is added things? Yet you like the game less now? Maybe the game wasn't all that in the first place.

I like the game, I just hate the Fanboi's that for the last year and STILL have to keep trying to prove SO HARD something about this game that just isn't there.

EDIT for speilin

Most everyone is using GW2LFG.com

I can get a dungeon group within a minute thanks to this handy web site. They even have an IOS App now too.

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analyst: Q4 2012 said to be a great quarter for ncsoft

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analyst: Q4 2012 said to be a great quarter for ncsoft

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