NCSoft Q4 report

necrolock

So, the NCSoft 4Q19 report was released today, and things are indeed looking grim for Guild Wars 2. The 4th quarter which is the holiday quarter should be one of the strongest, but it turns out it was the worst quarter by quite a margin.

You can download the Quarterly report here: http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/quarterly.aspx

bcbully

Wow... it’s at Wildstar levels...

cheyane

Lineage and Lineage II continue to perform well. NCSoft is doing badly overall won't you agree?

cheyane

Ppiper said:

Still don't get why NCSoft doesn't offer a subscription as an option.

They're probably afraid the remaining player base will abscond if they do.

Ungood

Wow, that is back down to post HoT Levels.

alyndale

I have never trusted NCSoft. I really feel for GW2 at this time. It really is a solid mmo to experience and I have always enjoyed my time there.

NCSoft is ruthless and have done some truly questionable things way back in the day in Lineage 2. I stopped L2 and have N EVER looked back.

Panther2103

Kind of the problem when you stop making expansions for the game that relied on expansions as a form of profit. Sure they have the cash shop but obviously that doesn't seem to be working on the population they have. 

Ungood

alyndale said:

I have never trusted NCSoft. I really feel for GW2 at this time. It really is a solid mmo to experience and I have always enjoyed my time there.

NCSoft is ruthless and have done some truly questionable things way back in the day in Lineage 2. I stopped L2 and have N EVER looked back.

It WAS decent, however, Anet of their own accord with their HoT Expansion, opted to go and screw with a Good thing by trying to make it more like other MMO's, and that ruined what originally set it apart and made it fun.

As I said, hopefully they will serve as a cautionary tale of how not to try and design a game.

azarhal

necrolock said:

So, the NCSoft 4Q19 report was released today, and things are indeed looking grim for Guild Wars 2. The 4th quarter which is the holiday quarter should be one of the strongest, but it turns out it was the worst quarter by quite a margin.

You can download the Quarterly report here: http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/quarterly.aspx

The game doesn't appear to have lost players that much, they just aren't spending money on the game as there wasn't anything new in the store in Q4 except for build templates and people are pissed at how much they cost. Also, lots of players got pissed at the "no new expansion news" mentioned right before Q4 started and decided to protest with their wallet.

Q1 will be the interest numbers to look at, as GW2 got a new type of cosmetic item (cape) and that's the only thing that finance the game (new cosmetic items).

Ungood

Panther2103 said:

Kind of the problem when you stop making expansions for the game that relied on expansions as a form of profit. Sure they have the cash shop but obviously that doesn't seem to be working on the population they have. 

I don't think Expansions were their revenue model, since it was 3 years from Launch to their first expansion.

We shall see what the future brings, but then again we are dealing with a company that opted to fire lay off half it's staff as opposed to working towards building a better game for their community. So there is that to consider.

gervaise1

Pretty sure GW2, Aion, B&S are all safe given the success of the Lineage port to mobile. For GW especially which is an "established" IP a port at some point in the future must be an option - and you wouldn't want to do that against the backdrop of a closure.

To a lesser extent the resurgence of both L1 and L2.

Also possible that there may be people that hop between the titles / move with promotions.

Big takeaway though: S. Korea remains NCSoft major market by a long way. 

Panther2103

Ungood said:

Panther2103 said:

Kind of the problem when you stop making expansions for the game that relied on expansions as a form of profit. Sure they have the cash shop but obviously that doesn't seem to be working on the population they have. 

I don't think Expansions were their revenue model, since it was 3 years from Launch to their first expansion.

We shall see what the future brings, but then again we are dealing with a company that opted to fire lay off half it's staff as opposed to working towards building a better game for their community. So there is that to consider.

Well the first 3 years the game was quite popular, and I'm sure at that point the cash shop was being used more. Not sure when the Living story started, but that brought in a little extra as people that didn't log in during it had to buy it if they wanted it. 

It's weird it is generating such little revenue as it's still quite popular. I played it last week and ran into so many people, and my guild had like 150 people online. 

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Xiaoki

That is definitely the lowest GW2 has ever been ....buuuut atleast its still above Aion. That counts for something? Right?

Fun Fact - GW2 quarterly revenue has always gone down at the start of a new Living World Season.

So, good thing they are putting the game's future into that. Riiiight?

botrytis

xD_Gaming said:

necrolock said:

So, the NCSoft 4Q19 report was released today, and things are indeed looking grim for Guild Wars 2. The 4th quarter which is the holiday quarter should be one of the strongest, but it turns out it was the worst quarter by quite a margin.

You can download the Quarterly report here: http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/quarterly.aspx

Well, when a company locks players out of games they own like Guild Wars 1 by ripping the game out of the NcSoft account without permission from the end user, then yes, GW2 is in trouble. What they did to me was inexcusable I am 100% I'm not the only one. I will never pay for anything from NcSoft or Arena.net again. What Arena.net did, makes Funcom look like super professional.

What are you talking about? People complained that you had to link GW1 and GW2 in NCSoft accounts and now you are complaining again? I can use GW1 and GW2 with no issues. GW1 is in maintenance mode and since it had such a small footprint, only 1 or 2 people part time can deal with it. 

I have no idea what you are talking about. I think it is just sour grapes.

Panther2103

blueturtle13 said:

Lineage 1 proving to be one of the greatest mmorpgs of all time. Year after year after year. 
I still play through VPN with my brother back home. Awesome game that still makes money 

Is there a way to play in English on the official servers or is it all in Korean? I can load up a private server but would prefer not to. 

maskedweasel

What do you expect, they haven't released and xpac and they haven't released info on when they will have one. At this stage in development GW1 already had 3 including the base game. 

They've failed to create content at a pace to keep revenue up. 

botrytis

Ppiper said:

cheyane said:

Ppiper said:

Still don't get why NCSoft doesn't offer a subscription as an option.

They're probably afraid the remaining player base will abscond if they do.

Good point. Let's look at LOTRO and ESO. Both have a sub as an option, correct? Still have their player base. It would be an option, free status would be the same and maybe offer Gems or some other form of enducement for sunscribers.

How many developers do they have? A.Net is one of the smaller players and even more so now that they were downsized. Having a sub doesn't mean quality games and more expansions.

I think people get stuck on that, the subs I mean. If you can't get a quality product from the beginning, no amount of subs will change that.

Ungood

Panther2103 said:

Ungood said:

Panther2103 said:

Kind of the problem when you stop making expansions for the game that relied on expansions as a form of profit. Sure they have the cash shop but obviously that doesn't seem to be working on the population they have. 

I don't think Expansions were their revenue model, since it was 3 years from Launch to their first expansion.

We shall see what the future brings, but then again we are dealing with a company that opted to fire lay off half it's staff as opposed to working towards building a better game for their community. So there is that to consider.

Well the first 3 years the game was quite popular, and I'm sure at that point the cash shop was being used more. Not sure when the Living story started, but that brought in a little extra as people that didn't log in during it had to buy it if they wanted it. 

It's weird it is generating such little revenue as it's still quite popular. I played it last week and ran into so many people, and my guild had like 150 people online. 

Apparently it is still populated, but players are not spending real money, this is something MO talked about before he left, and the why's and hows of the mount skin pack prices, that they had to be prohibitively expensive because too many players were using the Gold-2-Gem's which was not generating them revenue for their quarter.

I played with the numbers before, but that was over a year ago, so population no doubt has changed since then, but it was something like average player was spending  $4± a month.

Since the smallest pack you can buy is $10 this basically means that a little less than half the population is buying anything at all. 

botrytis

xD_Gaming said:

botrytis said:

xD_Gaming said:

necrolock said:

So, the NCSoft 4Q19 report was released today, and things are indeed looking grim for Guild Wars 2. The 4th quarter which is the holiday quarter should be one of the strongest, but it turns out it was the worst quarter by quite a margin.

You can download the Quarterly report here: http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/quarterly.aspx

Well, when a company locks players out of games they own like Guild Wars 1 by ripping the game out of the NcSoft account without permission from the end user, then yes, GW2 is in trouble. What they did to me was inexcusable I am 100% I'm not the only one. I will never pay for anything from NcSoft or Arena.net again. What Arena.net did, makes Funcom look like super professional.

What are you talking about? People complained that you had to link GW1 and GW2 in NCSoft accounts and now you are complaining again? I can use GW1 and GW2 with no issues. GW1 is in maintenance mode and since it had such a small footprint, only 1 or 2 people part time can deal with it. 

I have no idea what you are talking about. I think it is just sour grapes.

trying to justified what they did is laughable. What does your use of your accounts have to do with mine ? 0.

All accounts were treated the same, that is why. They were linked or you lost them. This was due to the titles that people earned in GW1 that affected titles in GW2. It was a way of making the 2 games linked in the same universe although the mechanics are totally different. A.Net moved to using NCSoft servers from their own and now NCSoft is using Amazon servers. 

Not justifying anything, just saying that is what happened. Whine all you want.

azarhal

maskedweasel said:

What do you expect, they haven't released and xpac and they haven't released info on when they will have one. At this stage in development GW1 already had 3 including the base game. 

They've failed to create content at a pace to keep revenue up. 

The expansions only caused a revenue spikes and going by the amount vs previous quarters revenues I actually doubt they made much of a profit with them.

HoT was even disastrous for the post-HoT quarters, as the game 2019 quarterly revenues outside Q4 are better than post-HoT/pre-PoF revenues which were a drop from what GW2 was making without releasing new content for over a year pre-HoT.

The Q4 result are tied directly to the build templates release (which happened at the start of Q4). Anet expected it to be their money maker for the quarter, but it flopped and they had nothing else to show. Also, WoW Classic release...

Ungood

azarhal said:
Also, WoW Classic release...

I think all the WoW refuges that they were trying to kiss ass too with HoT, left to go back home to WoW.

Would serve them right, for trying to cater to that group and not focusing on making what they had better for the group they had.

I believe the phrase is strangling the golden goose.

Scorchien

 I warned last year when the 4th qtr report came out , that ANet was in trouble , they hang by a thread .. you do not want to finish at the bottom of NCSoft stable,  And no Aion does not count and never has , as it is an in house project and not under the same scrutiny , the list of games at the bottom of NCsoft stable to be axed is long .. Anet very well could be next ..

Ungood

Scorchien said:

 I warned last year when the 4th qtr report came out , that ANet was in trouble , they hang by a thread .. you do not want to finish at the bottom of NCSoft stable,  And no Aion does not count and never has , as it is an in house project and not under the same scrutiny , the list of games at the bottom of NCsoft stable to be axed is long .. Anet very well could be next ..

Keep in mind, Anet is a company that left half their staff working on "Other" projects while their flag ship game GW2 was sinking hard and fast, which resulted in half their staff being let go, and all those "other" projects becoming vaporware.

So we are not dealing with the smartest marshmallows on the stick here.

Scorchien

Ungood said:

Scorchien said:

 I warned last year when the 4th qtr report came out , that ANet was in trouble , they hang by a thread .. you do not want to finish at the bottom of NCSoft stable,  And no Aion does not count and never has , as it is an in house project and not under the same scrutiny , the list of games at the bottom of NCsoft stable to be axed is long .. Anet very well could be next ..

Keep in mind, Anet is a company that left half their staff working on "Other" projects while their flag ship game GW2 was sinking hard and fast, which resulted in half their staff being let go, and all those "other" projects becoming vaporware.

So we are not dealing with the smartest marshmallows on the stick here.

There bigger problem is letting NCsoft ( which i hold a fair amount of shares) Get a hold of every single share of Anet ..They are completly at there mercy ..

 

Ungood

Scorchien said:

Ungood said:

Scorchien said:

 I warned last year when the 4th qtr report came out , that ANet was in trouble , they hang by a thread .. you do not want to finish at the bottom of NCSoft stable,  And no Aion does not count and never has , as it is an in house project and not under the same scrutiny , the list of games at the bottom of NCsoft stable to be axed is long .. Anet very well could be next ..

Keep in mind, Anet is a company that left half their staff working on "Other" projects while their flag ship game GW2 was sinking hard and fast, which resulted in half their staff being let go, and all those "other" projects becoming vaporware.

So we are not dealing with the smartest marshmallows on the stick here.

There bigger problem is letting NCsoft ( which i hold a fair amount of shares) Get a hold of every single share of Anet ..They are completly at there mercy ..

 

They are more at the mercy of their own poor decisions.