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COH profits, active users and forcasted profits. NCsoft Q2 2006 reports.
baff
Member Posts: 9,457
http://www.ncsoft.com/fileupdown/upload/EN_NCIREarningRelease/062Qearnigs(ENG).zip
The servers have lost a thousand users from across the board since last month and the peak population count is down slightly too.
I doubt if it's enough to be visible to the naked eye.
Profitswise it's down 39% from last year. Population and profits are expected to continue to decline slightly next year.
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I think the 39% fall in profits relates to the lack of boxes on shelves. And I think the predicted decline in 2007 implies that no expansion pack is planned for that year.
Comments
Good info, thanks.
I think the numbers were a 5% drop in sale in addition to the 39% drop in profit. Which means most of the profit drop probably came from reducing their price on boxes. Not surprising given that GvE is being sold through Walmart.
The cancellation of the one-time 2007 expansion had been announced previously, so no surprise there. At first I was a little surprised they wouldn't have gone for a shot at more cash. But having thought about it more, I can see why they didn't. Main staff has to stay dedicated to free releases or else earn badwill from existing customers. And hiring more people just to get rid of them later (as was done for CoV) is problematic for them - much as it tends to be for most software software companies.
Server counts are actually more stable than I would have thought. They'd never release it but I wonder what subscription renewals look like on a day-by-day basis related to new Issues. For example, I myself took a 6 weeks off recently and re-upped with Halloween live and I8 on test.
Currently playing:
DC Universe
Planetside 2
Magic Online
Simunomics, the Massive Multiplayer Economic Simulation Game. Play for free.
I'm under the impression that they are currently working on a new title for Marvel. I wouldn't be expecting the resources devoted to new content to improve in anyway. Maybe the opposite given that Statesman is rumored to have left the team, but still works for the company.
I also don't think the price a retailer charges for the game necessarily reflects on the price a company sold it to him.
For example if they sold all of their boxes on the first print run, then any discount in price would make no difference. That would simply be the retailer attempting to cycle his stock. However if they did not sell all of their initial print run, they may have dropped their prices to cycle their own stock to the retailers, who could then pass on the lowered cost to their customers. I don't think of COV getting a second print run.
I've no idea what daily subscriptions would look like, except that since all renewals last a minimum of 1 month any trend should still be apparent from their server statistics. It is of note that the stats are for server access and not subscriptions only. Free trials are included in the numbers.
I'm suprised this MMO still has 20k subscribers and that only 1k has quit. edit- Entire supergroups left for WoW, others rerolled to CoH from CoV, then many others I know of jsut simply disappeared
What's ironic there is ppl out there that think CoX had 200,000 subscribers which has never been the case
Okay correct if I'm wrong here but according to that report CoX has 0% the population WoW has and approx 0.01% of Guild Wars population.
I fear you may be confusing "monthly access" with "concurrent users". Subscribers peaked at 194,000 in Q4 last year. Technically not 200k, but not so far off. Concurrent users is more a measure of peak server load.
I'm not sure the value of the comparisons, since GW doesn't have a monthly fee and WoW is an acknowledged juggernaut, but the July numbers put WoW at 6.5 mil and CoX at 171k, or roughly 2.5%.
Not necessarily, but to the extent that NCSoft is still shipping boxes, they're almost certainly not charging the same price they did two years ago. Nor do I think Amazon is foolish enough to have overbought so considerably that they're still sitting on their own supply from back then. (At $10 no less.) I'm sure there's some measure of retailers clearing at a possible loss, but I also suspect the wholesale price has dropped, since no matter how they ordered the print runs they must have some on hand.Except those are quarterly stats, so it could potentially hide a lot of info. I could be playing, lapse my subscription for 2 months, then re-up. And since I'm seen active at the beginning and end of the period, it wouldn't show.Currently playing:
DC Universe
Planetside 2
Magic Online
Simunomics, the Massive Multiplayer Economic Simulation Game. Play for free.
Doesn't matter to me either way. They're already working on a new
project and as long as they keep the CoX servers up, I'll be fine.
From what I can gather, they've migrated some of the older staff from CoH/CoV to kinda supervisory roles, generally watching over multiple games at once. For example, Statesman's new title is 'Cryptic Studios Creative Director'.
They also claim that they're keeping the staffing of CoH/CoV the same as it was for CoH during that first year (which is to say just CoH, not the extra staff hired to produce CoV). If that's true, there should be enough staff to provide a fairly acceptable amount of content, but they'll either have to make some sort of shared content, or kind of switch off on which side they give the content to (which is what they've been doing).
And Cryptic is working on the Marvel MMO which is going to be a Xbox360/PC title I believe. They're also working on at least one, possibly two other as-yet-unnamed MMOs.
Onething to take into account is that COH is now essentially 2 games. COH/X got a big boost with the addition of COV. Not only did COV add about 50k accounts, but it has help counter the the number of people who have left the game. I think COH has made some major mishandling of their game and should be closer to about 300-400k user, but one thing they have done well is space things such as euro-launch, highly anticipated issues and COV in a way that has made their over all nubers pretty steady. That said I think their just about out of trixs and would expect the game to settle in the 120-150 K users which doesn't sound to bad until you realise that as I said before that is for essentualy 2 games. COx will be a ghost town with out merging servers.
One thing I'd like to see is a reduction of street crime in the game. With the addtion of more content there no longer needs to be a mugging on every corner.
arise from the grave. here is the Q4 report: http://www.ncsoft.com/eng/nccompany/ir_data_report04.asp
They are now down to 154k but thats not bad. in line with this prediction- I think we see lower game sales and subs because they are not working on a new expansion
That's not bad at all. Issue 9 might get those numbers up.
The population is so spread out on the different servers, I wonder if condensing a few servers might be a good thing. It would be easier to find teams and get people into Supergroups.
Lisa H.
Plays both CoH & CoV
Figured I'd bump this instead of creating a new thread.
2007 Q1 numbers are in. Given that there were zero releases in that time, you might expect that numbers are down. If so, you expect correctly:
Monthly Access (# of subscribers)= 143,127
Highest Concurrent Users (Playing during busiest period) = 14,767
Both are down a bit, but concurrent users more than subscriptions. So their profits aren't hurting, but people saying it "feels" emptier aren't entirely wrong. (Of course I've been hearing that for over a year, so I think a lot of it is still psychological too.)
Time will tell what i9 does. As I said elsewhere, i9 is less of a "spend 2 weeks with the new content and leave" issue than past ones have been. However, I don't know yet if it will lure back enough past players. I know there have been people who cited lack of crafting as their reason for leaving. But in the intervening time they may have found something else instead.
I'm sure this will (again) raise the question of server mergers. I still think it's a bit off, as it raises a lot of logistical issues. But it wouldn't surprise me if the next few months are their measuring stick for that decision.
Currently playing:
DC Universe
Planetside 2
Magic Online
Simunomics, the Massive Multiplayer Economic Simulation Game. Play for free.
Down to 143k. Hm, I did predict a slow decline because no expansion forthcoming. Issue 9 is a good overall change that will help retain customers but I suspect it wont really help get the influx of new blood. They really, really need to get an expansion going. I think if Cryptic wasn't so tightly focused on MArvel MMO we'd see more updates. Like maybe they'd try to get an expansion going to get this guy back on the shelves. there's some gamers like me that goes to the store and they're like, "Hey, I never did give City of Heroes a try!". They pick it up and bam....