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NCSoft 3rd Quarter Earnings
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Yes, that is a huge and swift drop-off. Hardly surprising but quite stark when you see it in this manner.
Does anyone know if WS has broke even or made returns on it investment or no? I read on the forums that they're in the black but no one has posted any official links or details on it. I ask because I am beginning to think they're getting sales and revenues confused with profits.
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Add the revenue for two quarters; take away from that the spike in Marketing and Box Production costs reported last quarter that NCSoft attributed to WS and you are not left with much.
Running costs for the last c. 6 months - Carbine had about 100 staff at launch - plus staff (and all the other costs) for the last 7 years. OK they had less than 100 staff when NCSoft bought them but about 7.5 years staff costs (wages, employee taxes, pension, medical, software licenses .... some tens of millions.
And on top of that you have whatever NCSoft paid to buy Carbine: OK only a small company, 17 or whatever staff that had developed the WS idea over 2 years but .... another few millions at least you would feel.
So - without even worrying about all the other overheads businesses have like building costs, power, insurance, internal interest rates and so on we can be absolutely sure that WS has not broken even.
The next question is: is WS making a day-to-day profit? Harder question.
The quarters revenue was c. $14M - we don't know how much of this is box sales but assume its all basic $15 a month sub income then you are looking at 300k-350k subscribers max. So probably just about OK although 100 staff + whatever customer service staff costs there are and all those other over heads (and company taxes) will tae their toll. And projecting forward you would have to assume that subs will drop further ..... so you take steps to limit your costs ... and staff costs, especially senior staff costs, are a big driver. I would expect Carbine to be folded into another part of NCSoft once the current round of restructuring has been completed to take out whatever is left of Carbine's senior management. If you have lost c. 70 of 100 staff you don't need m(any) senior managers!
It looks like free to play is really becoming the superior model over p2p by just comparing Aion and Wildstar in this chart.
Isn't Lineage 1 still P2P in Korea? In the end, it's not the payment model but the game itself, if it's a good game, regardless of the payment model, it'll make money.
Lineage 1 had to shut down in the U.S due to lack of subs. After Aion went from p2p to f2p their revenue tripled.
The only game nowadays that can handle the p2p model is WoW and Eve. I don't know wtf Carbine was thinking when they went with the $60+$15 model.
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