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NCsoft quarterly report is out... not looking good for gw2...
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Actually we don't know what their profits are. Sales are not what companies keep, there are tons of expenses. For NCSoft this quarter alone, expenses were 70%. Even if we take out expenses they don't keep the remaining dollars. It isn't as simple as black and white.
Sales drop during spring and summer months of the year, this is normal, I'm not going to overexplain it like I did in my other post, go read that one if your finding this concept difficult to grasp.
You have any proof to back that up? Or are you just assuming?
People still play GW2? j/k
Anyways, I guess trying out the B2P platform was a gamble, it's probably best just to see where this game is in 5 years.
Other than that, I enjoyed GW2 to about level 40 and burnt out. It's just not my type of mmorpg and got a feeling EQN is going to be very similiar to this game as well.
I made several attempts to get back into this style of mmo, however it's just to simple and repetitive for my taste. This mmo is built for the new generation gamer in mind <imo>
Can NCSoft make this GW2 title successful in the long run? Only time will tell.
WoW's profits continued to rise for years after its release. GW2's has gone down since right after release. I am just pointing out how he is wrong. Simple as that.
James T. Kirk: All she's got isn't good enough! What else ya got?
>_> Yeah I have proof. Why do you think not many big name titles release during the spring and summer months? Think real hard, but don't hurt yourself. It's the same reason that crime escalates during the Spring and Summer months from the other months. Here's the answer, it's because everybody goes outside during these months! They have the beach to go to, the pool, the ball games, clubs, etc... People go outside during these months, they have other things to do other than play games.
The proof is in the release schedule of every single year that goes by. Never gonna see a CoD game release in the summer I can tell you that.
No one is disagreeing that the Holiday season is the best time to release games. But the second highest selling game of last year as an example was released during the Summer (Madden).
MMOs are a completely different beast however, good ones usually grow after release month over month. It doesn't drop and then go up again. You gain users and it snowballs from there. In fact, bad games peak during their launch quarter.
I never said it wasn't profitable. I am saying saying things like they made 240 million is not even close to fact. I very well know what they did to Tabula Rasa and CoH (which was profitable)
1) Buy to play and free to play are two completely different models, but I wouldn't expect someone who can't even attempt to type in English without giving everyone an aneurysm to know that.
Free to play is typically disconnected from the developer - with a publisher handling most, if not all customer relations (see Aeria Games, Perfect World, gPotato, and most other f2p game publishers). Buy-to-play games (IE: Guild Wars 2) involve direct relations between the developer and the community, just as you'd expect in a subscription title.
Free to play exists solely through a cash shop. These cash shops are typically highly invasive and often involve power selling. Guild Wars 2, as a buy to play game, does not need an invasive cash shop to function, and sells only cosmetics and convenience items as a result. You can even trade gold for gems to get these optional functions without spending an extra cent on the game.
Free to play has no barriers to entry. On the positive side, this allows free experimentation with the game. Unfortunately, it also results in a typically younger audience and trivializes the impact of having one's account banned, inevitably resulting in a bad community. Buy to play involves a basic barrier to entry in its box sale price, which also serves to add weight to account bans.
Free to play and buy to play games have different design philosophies. Free to play games involve heavy grind to encourage you to spend money on the cash shop for short cuts. There is a huge emphasis on the cash shop. Buy to lpay games are designed to be played, put down, and picked back up at any time. Leveling is fast, grind is comparatively low, and the cash shop is not emphasized nearly as strongly in a buy to play game.
2) The Final Fantasy series hasn't been good (or even decent) in ages. FFX was the last decent console Final Fantasy. FFXIII was downright cringeworthy. Hell, I'd argue that the FF series has been mediocre at best since day one. I'll give you Deus Ex, Kingdom Hearts, and Dragon Quest, but this does not redeem the fact that Square's flagship series is getting worse with every installment (which is saying something, because they've been really bad for a really long time.)
Also, there's no "fact checking" involved here. It's all opinions. You think Square games are awesome. I think most Square games suck ass on a level that is rarely topped in the gaming industry. Neither of those are facts. When you attempt to send my quote back at me, try to use it in the proper context to avoid making yourself look even more daft.
3) You should probably fact check yourself on Guild Wars 2 before flaming it in its own forum. You get FIVE bag slots to start with, not 2. They give you plenty of bank space and additional bank space is cheap. Those chests contain nothing of remarkable value - the boosts are weak, optional convenience stuff, and the only items of real note are the weapon tickets. On top of everything in the Guild Wars 2 cash shop being COSMETIC or CONVENIENCE items, ALL OF IT CAN BE OBTAINED FOR IN GAME CURRENCY.
All Guild Wars 2 content is available for the box price, just like a subscription game. Cosmetic cash shop items are not content. All bank slots, character slots, bag slots, chest keys, etc. can be obtained by trading game currency for cash shop currency at reasonable rates. In the end, I own everything without having ever paid a single extra cent on the game - that's much more than I can say for your crappy subscription model, which would charge me $15/month just to play a game I already paid for.
No MMO's are like other games nowadays, but WoW and Eve are NOT like other games, and I will explain why. I really should make what I'm about to tell you a thread, because a lot of people don't seem to bring this into consideration when they bring up WoW as a point for monumental success of a relatively sub-par game (nowadays). This upcoming explanation fits for EVE as well but I'm going to focus on WoW.
World of Warcraft released on November 23rd, 2004. nearly 1 decade ago. 1 decade ago, the amount of MMO's that were on the market were less than a handful. Everquest was going strong, because it was just about one of a kind when it came out. Dark Age of Camelot followed, so did EVE, and a handful of others, but Everquest was the biggest.
Then came World of Warcraft, which was a FAR more "accessible" game than Everquest was. By today's standards it was hard as sh*t but back then it was much more forgiving than Everquest was. This brought out big review scores as well as critical acclaim and praise because the game was definitely amazing. Blizzard caught lightning in a bottle with WoW, right place at right time. It got massive amount of attention from news channels and internet sites and just about everybody because of it's surge in popularity.
Eve didn't get this treatment, but as people looked at WoW with dollar signs in their eyes, MMO's started popping up everywhere and the MMO genre skyrocketed, which brought more subs to Eve because of the genre's new popularity.
Nowadays, MMO's are constantly flowing on the market. Every year there is a handful more. It's safe to assume that the MMO genre is now mainstreamed into the gaming culture. MMO's weren't like other games back then, nowadays, they definitely are.
You're still comparing subscription numbers to box sales and making the assumption that they both work on the same market trends. Here's a startling revelation: they don't.
A buy to play game, as evidenced by consoles and other b2p online titles, WILL peak in sales during its first quarter. Why? Because the majority of players who are interested in the game will have bought it at this point. Buy to play games aim at first quarter sales, because they aren't designed to need constant player retention. After this point, sales will only dwindle as more and more of the game's interested audience will have already purchased the game. The only effective means of significantly boosting player numbers when a buy-to-play game reaches this point is to either reduce the box cost or go fully free to play.
A subscription game's sub numbers will rise and fall based on the quality of the game, its sustainability, and any expansion releases. With a sub game, if its numbers aren't rising and hitting peaks at expansion releases, it's not a good MMORPG and you'd be 100% correct in that assumption.
If Guild Wars 2 was a subscription game, then your argument would apply to it and it would be a "bad" game through your evidence. The problem is, your argument really doesn't apply to buy-to-play models by the very nature of how a buy to play business plan works and how this specific business model is marketed.
So a long winded way to say there is more competition in the market and more expectations which will hurt the sales of all games. I don't see how that refutes the argument that GW2 sales as an example will keep going down quarter after quarter especially due to increased competition in the coming months.
GW2's quarterly reports will be skewed by holiday events. Do be surprised if next quarter shows higher earnings due to Halloween
Games:
Currently playing:Nothing
Will play: Darkfall: Unholy Wars
Past games:
Guild Wars 2 - Xpiher Duminous
Xpiher's GW2
GW 1 - Xpiher Duminous
Darkfall - Xpiher Duminous (NA) retired
AoC - Xpiher (Tyranny) retired
Warhammer - Xpiher
I disagree with the premise that it isn't growing because it is B2P. It isn't growing due to increases competition in the market. If WoW were B2P during its release it wouldn't have peaked in the first quarter.
There is no reason why GW2 couldn't have sold 2 million additional copies in Q1 '13. The reason is not because it is B2P, it is because it wasn't a blockbuster like WoW was during its release. Or because there is increased competition in the market.
A MMOs success is based on active users, regardless of payment model.
It's a buy to play game but I'm not super surprised that sales are down. What I also seem to be reading on the later pages is that earnings are up. I'm actually surprised that it's still selling in 2QTR.
After taking a few months off I logged in again to check out the Queen's Jubilee. The 2 week scheduele is pretty damned impressive when compared to ANY mmo that has been released.
Play for fun. Play to win. Play for perfection. Play with friends. Play in another world. Why do you play?
Of course not, it is a year old and you can´t expect to sell as many copies as when the game is new. Selling gems will not get in the money you get from a boxsale either (I did buy a gemcard this month to get 2 character slots more myself, mostly because I am farming for my legendary so I can't put my gold into them).
The original Guildwars profits dropped as well until the first expansion hit and so will GW2, but NC soft did say there will be an expansion and I am sure that will increase the profits again. Every time GW released an expansion player numbers rised as well as almost all current players bought it.
But I honestly don't care as long as they have a profit so they upgrade the game and don't start selling gamebreakers in the gemstore, getting in the development cost the first year is fine by me.
Yeah.... e-mails the I for one have never received of any kind. Only the major events.
You want an invasive cash shop? Go play DDO or Neverwinter. GW2 is BY FAR one of the most non-invasive CS designs and a model for others to emulate.
Guild Wars 2 IS growing. There are more full servers now than at launch. The number of box sales can only increase, not decrease. Anet is HIRING staff, not firing them. All of these provide substantial evidence to a game that is still healthy by all accounts.
Model is everything. Success is based on business, not active users (and there is no data on the number of players who are actually active and spending significant amounts of time in the game now as opposed to launch). The definition of success for a subscription game IS active players because it needs to keep active players to succeed from a financial standpoint. The success of a free to play game relies on cash shop sales totals. The success of a buy to play game is measured in box sales and cash shop totals. Guild Wars 2 was already successful in terms of box sales, and there is no data that shows gem store earnings at this time versus gem store earnings at launch; therefore it is impossible to infer whether the game is meeting its projected earnings (in other words - being successful) at this time.
Basically, your entire argument is based on assumptions that (as I said before) are only valid when aimed at subscription models.
Now, unless you can come up with a new argument that actually works or move on to a new point entirely, I'd like to wash my hands of this little debate, because it has no value and no point. You haven't provided a single substantial point, made a single strong argument, or even provided a significant rebuttal at any point. In fact, your last paragraph started with the equivalent of "I think" and didn't even bother to provide a "because."
A hypothetical scenario of WoW releasing as a b2p game is invalid - it wasn't released as a buy to play game. There is no evidence of what would have happened had it been a b2p game.
Oh, and the reason Guild Wars 2 hasn't sold an additional 2 million copies is because it hasn't expanded its market yet. It's about to launch in China and you're about to be proven wrong.
Stable is "not looking good" to you? /rolleyes Seriously, the game is doing great and if you played it you would see that. There are around 4 "Full" servers nearly every single night in the US and most other servers have very high population. This is not to mention that they patch every 2 weeks and the total sum of content they are providing has just gotten better and better. Continue hating on the game all you wan't because you don't like it, but don't try to act like the game is not doing well enough to provide a constant flow of great content. Honestly, I could care less if the profits even went down, as long as they keep pumping out these updates like they have been.
Fact of the matter is that the ArenaNet has over 300 employees iirc, and they are still hiring. There has been no layoffs like other MMO devs (All of them except WoW?) after launch. This says a lot more then these quarterly reports do.
"Full" servers mean nothing. It can be changed by devs. WoW does it, Rift did it, SWTOR did it. A dev can easily switch the code to say "Full = 300 concurrent" and call it a day. My WoW server says "Medium" when it is dead. My GW2 server says "High" when it is dead. My SWTOR server said "Full" before they merged it. Concrete data like website traffic, sites like Raptr and Xifre, sales figures from NCSoft, population in sPvP and other things we can actually measure say otherwise.
No, success is based on active users. Active users mean revenue in any model. Less active users the less gem sales. This is true for all models. The more gem sales the bigger the better the content. And it will help longevity of the game. When box sales and gem sales drop, NCSoft will just stop funding GW2 and keep it alive and just put all their money in games like WildStar.
"Full" servers mean nothing to you maybe. If you want to speculate you can say that pretty much all MMOs lie about server populations. This is you trying to base facts off of something that is pure speculation.
Success is based on the amount of content that the game can continue to produce to keep their player base happy. This is something that has only picked up tremendously over time. If they are not making enough money to keep up with the updates then the game is not as successful. This is obviously not true as they are providing more content then any MMO has except maybe Rift in the first year.
ArenaNet is hiring. They have not laid off anyone and they continue to produce quality updates. The only fact here is that you want to throw your speculations around like they are facts when anyone who plays the game on any kind of regular basis knows how wrong you are.
Its highly likely that only a fraction of those who bought the game, actually play it much on a weekly basis, there is one thing that would probably change this though, and its the same kind of thing that happens in World of Warcraft, and thats the expansion effect. Whenever WoW releases a new expansion for the game, then lapsed players appear and bulk up the numbers for a while, i would imagine that the same thing could easily happen in GW2. So it would not surprise me at all, if some time in the next 6 months or so Ncsoft doesnt release an expansion for GW2, and lapsed players return like crazy. It would also be a good indication as to player numbers by number sold. I doubt it would sell as many as the original game, but it should be good for at least 50% maybe. The problem is that GW2 is now a comparatively old game, there are lots of new games up and coming, if the game doesnt have an expansion in the next 6 months, i wouldnt be at all surprised if the game is put on life support with a possible sunset a year after.
Anet is NCsofts lowest grossing subsidiary though. Down about 80% since launch and 20% last quarter.
I mean it's all relative, but to keep it in perspective GW2 is earning abut as much as AION.
The amazing part of the report is the success of Lineage 1. It is basically carrying NCSoft on its back. That game itself had almost 50% of sales for NCSoft and saw almost a 30% growth from Q1 '13 to Q2 '13. Just amazing.
But you are right, for NCSoft, GW2 and Aion are on par.