According to the NCSoft earnings report, the company experienced healthy earnings during the fourth quarter of 2012. Barring losses by Aion and Lineage II, the company maintained an 'in the red' report due to strong sales of Lineage, Guild Wars 2, and Blade & Soul.
Do you realise that "in the red" indicates losses and is generally considered a bad thing. That is why massively ended their article with this statement "NCsoft's net income was in the red for the quarter and its stock has slid since September, losing half of its value in the process."
GW2 has been performing, overall everything wasn't peaches and cream.
My comment had nothing to do with GW2's figures, I was merely commenting on the inaccuracy in the article, as it did not "maintain" losses due to strong sales.
According to the NCSoft earnings report, the company experienced healthy earnings during the fourth quarter of 2012. Barring losses by Aion and Lineage II, the company maintained an 'in the red' report due to strong sales of Lineage, Guild Wars 2, and Blade & Soul.
Do you realise that "in the red" indicates losses and is generally considered a bad thing. That is why massively ended their article with this statement "NCsoft's net income was in the red for the quarter and its stock has slid since September, losing half of its value in the process."
GW2 has been performing, overall everything wasn't peaches and cream.
My comment had nothing to do with GW2's figures, I was merely commenting on the inaccuracy in the article, as it did not "maintain" losses due to strong sales.
I removed my comment because I noticed that after the fact.
However, the figures you and MASSIVELY are talking about are the "Parent" figures, which I can only assume are NCSoft itself. When you look at the whole figures at the very beggining you will see that net income be higher qoq and yoy inmensely.
Read for yourself. As expected a nice portion of box sales were held over from the 3rd qt. Even with that it looks like they lost quite a bit. Stock went down another 5% today too.
$150M would be around 5 million boxes ($30 per box).
There is heavy gem money in there too
Currently playing: GW2 Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
A bigger question is what is NCsoft's cut out of Guild Wars 2? Without this being known, no useful conclusion can be drawn, other than what is plainly presented by the graph. I am curious to see how the region graph changes with the release of Blade and Soul over in North America. From what I hear about KR and Korean culture, Blade and Soul is the best thing since sliced bread.
Originally posted by drbaltazar Ncsoft is in the red ,arenanet saved ncsoft ass (again)
I don't understand how though, they must be really poor with money management, they have Blade and Soul, Lineage and Aion all in Korea, I don't know about Lineage but I know Aion and Blade and Soul are sub based there and each has hundreds of thousands of players, Lineage also has a tonne of players... what are they doing wrong to end up in the red in Korea?
Originally posted by drbaltazar Ncsoft is in the red ,arenanet saved ncsoft ass (again)
I don't understand how though, they must be really poor with money management, they have Blade and Soul, Lineage and Aion all in Korea, I don't know about Lineage but I know Aion and Blade and Soul are sub based there and each has hundreds of thousands of players, Lineage also has a tonne of players... what are they doing wrong to end up in the red in Korea?
Aion is F2P utilizing the "Truly Free" conversion they started with Lineage 2. Do they still have subs as well?
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
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Originally posted by ichihaifu "how unexpected" "GW2 is profitable after all, I wonder why is that"
You can't know if a game is profitable unless you know how much it cost to make. My guess is that Guild Wars 2 has probably gotten more in sales already than it cost to make, but that's just a guess.
Originally posted by Jakdstripper how the hell does Korea (assuming south Korea), a nation of 50 mil people, beat Europe + N America's in sales? :O....last i checked Koreans' are not rich....how the heck do they spend that kind of money on mmos? what does the average Korean family do once they get a paycheck ? "buy food, pimp out my GW2 character, and then pay rent if there is anything left..."?
NC Soft has a much larger percentage of the game market in South Korea than elsewhere. Other than Guild Wars 2, most of their games don't sell much outside of South Korea, but several of them sell very, very well there. Lineage 1 is to the South Korea market roughly as World of Warcraft is to the US market.
Furthermore, while North Korea is still a disaster, South Korea isn't. Per capita income there is about 2/3 of what it is in the US. To put that into perspective, that puts them slightly ahead of Spain and Italy, and slightly behind Ireland and France. Remember also that MMORPGs are a very cheap form of entertainment.
Originally posted by Asamof amazing how many people still play lineage 1
Is L1 still sub? or a F2P conversion?
pure sub, and even with only the Korean server running it's the second most popular sub game besides WoW hovering at about 1 million subs. after 16 years....
Originally posted by bcbullyhttp://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/earnings.aspxRead for yourself. As expected a nice portion of box sales were held over from the 3rd qt. Even with that it looks like they lost quite a bit. Stock went down another 5% today too.
$150M would be around 5 million boxes ($30 per box).
There is heavy gem money in there too
Im guessing you missed that ArenaNet themselves announced that GW2 has sold 3 million boxes as of January.
I mean, really, where did you get 5 million boxes sold at $30?
EDIT - actually you didnt. After checking your post history you did post about GW2 selling 3 million copies. A bunch of times too.
So, did you think that GW2 sold 2 million boxes in the span of negative 2 weeks or something?
Originally posted by bcbullyhttp://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/earnings.aspxRead for yourself. As expected a nice portion of box sales were held over from the 3rd qt. Even with that it looks like they lost quite a bit. Stock went down another 5% today too.
$150M would be around 5 million boxes ($30 per box).
There is heavy gem money in there too
Im guessing you missed that ArenaNet themselves announced that GW2 has sold 3 million boxes as of January.
I mean, really, where did you get 5 million boxes sold at $30?
he is clearly saying that the money made includes microtransactions.
Grats for them. Really all I got to say, GW2 did pretty good.
Yes, I still feel its a very lack luster game, doesn't mean I can't be happy for them and wish them luck. Its no where near a huge success but its not doing bad at all.
Actually looking at the charts NCSoft made a profit in 2011 and 2012. I am just not sure what monetary units those charts represent. Their profits went up some in 2012 with over half of their revenue coming from Korea with the rest spread out over other countries including North America.
Unless GW2 box sales keep up the pace OR cash shop sales go up even further, they might not get a return on their investement.
I'm guessing their exceedingly high expenses were due to producing / marketing GW2. They might not be.
I wouldnt worry too much about that. Just boxsales of GW2 should cover most of the expenses (it sold somewhere around 2,5 million copies which should be raking in about what the game cost to make but ANET will take a piece of the cake as well), some itemshop stuff and the first expansion will easily take the last of the development cost and get in some earnings too.
But getting your money back (do anyone actually doubt that) and earning a huge sum of money are 2 different things. And NC softs AION is doing pretty badly nowadays, Blade & soul also did a lot worse than expected and NC soft is working on a new Lineage game and probably something more.
Just living on their share of GW2 and old Lineage wont work long term for them so I am not surprised they are in the red, making MMOs is expensive as you said and larger companies cant afford to fail several MMOs.
Originally posted by bcbullyhttp://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/earnings.aspxRead for yourself. As expected a nice portion of box sales were held over from the 3rd qt. Even with that it looks like they lost quite a bit. Stock went down another 5% today too.
$150M would be around 5 million boxes ($30 per box).
There is heavy gem money in there too
Im guessing you missed that ArenaNet themselves announced that GW2 has sold 3 million boxes as of January.
I mean, really, where did you get 5 million boxes sold at $30?
he is clearly saying that the money made includes microtransactions.
Exactly..
Since we know they "only" sold 3 millions the other "1-2 million boxes" has to be gems sales.
Currently playing: GW2 Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Comments
My comment had nothing to do with GW2's figures, I was merely commenting on the inaccuracy in the article, as it did not "maintain" losses due to strong sales.
I removed my comment because I noticed that after the fact.
However, the figures you and MASSIVELY are talking about are the "Parent" figures, which I can only assume are NCSoft itself. When you look at the whole figures at the very beggining you will see that net income be higher qoq and yoy inmensely.
Sure but the numbers present are Billion wons.
So billions won divided by 1000 is Millions USD.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
I was about to say this very same thing. It's kind of scary and/or amazing.
$150M would be around 5 million boxes ($30 per box).
There is heavy gem money in there too
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Well there we go, a lesson for all of us not to use Gaming Websites to analyse financial results for us.
They saw the parent company graphs, which is indeed in red. But those don't take in to account GW2.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Is L1 still sub? or a F2P conversion?
I don't understand how though, they must be really poor with money management, they have Blade and Soul, Lineage and Aion all in Korea, I don't know about Lineage but I know Aion and Blade and Soul are sub based there and each has hundreds of thousands of players, Lineage also has a tonne of players... what are they doing wrong to end up in the red in Korea?
Aion is F2P utilizing the "Truly Free" conversion they started with Lineage 2. Do they still have subs as well?
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
I don't hate much, but I hate Apple© with a passion. If Steve Jobs was alive, I would punch him in the face.
Play as your fav retro characters: cnd-online.net. My site: www.lysle.net. Blog: creatingaworld.blogspot.com.
I hope NCSoft's board of directors eventually get spanked in public and fired in shame. But then I am vindictive that way.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
You can't know if a game is profitable unless you know how much it cost to make. My guess is that Guild Wars 2 has probably gotten more in sales already than it cost to make, but that's just a guess.
NC Soft has a much larger percentage of the game market in South Korea than elsewhere. Other than Guild Wars 2, most of their games don't sell much outside of South Korea, but several of them sell very, very well there. Lineage 1 is to the South Korea market roughly as World of Warcraft is to the US market.
Furthermore, while North Korea is still a disaster, South Korea isn't. Per capita income there is about 2/3 of what it is in the US. To put that into perspective, that puts them slightly ahead of Spain and Italy, and slightly behind Ireland and France. Remember also that MMORPGs are a very cheap form of entertainment.
See page 7 here for my source:
http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/HDR_2011_EN_Tables.pdf
pure sub, and even with only the Korean server running it's the second most popular sub game besides WoW hovering at about 1 million subs. after 16 years....
I mean, really, where did you get 5 million boxes sold at $30?
EDIT - actually you didnt. After checking your post history you did post about GW2 selling 3 million copies. A bunch of times too.
So, did you think that GW2 sold 2 million boxes in the span of negative 2 weeks or something?
he is clearly saying that the money made includes microtransactions.
Grats for them. Really all I got to say, GW2 did pretty good.
Yes, I still feel its a very lack luster game, doesn't mean I can't be happy for them and wish them luck. Its no where near a huge success but its not doing bad at all.
you forgot about one thing
when they release expansion
even if half the ppl buy it they make insane profit
you cant look at expenses/profit in few months timeline
I wouldnt worry too much about that. Just boxsales of GW2 should cover most of the expenses (it sold somewhere around 2,5 million copies which should be raking in about what the game cost to make but ANET will take a piece of the cake as well), some itemshop stuff and the first expansion will easily take the last of the development cost and get in some earnings too.
But getting your money back (do anyone actually doubt that) and earning a huge sum of money are 2 different things. And NC softs AION is doing pretty badly nowadays, Blade & soul also did a lot worse than expected and NC soft is working on a new Lineage game and probably something more.
Just living on their share of GW2 and old Lineage wont work long term for them so I am not surprised they are in the red, making MMOs is expensive as you said and larger companies cant afford to fail several MMOs.
Exactly..
Since we know they "only" sold 3 millions the other "1-2 million boxes" has to be gems sales.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders