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11/08/09 4:32:47 AM#61
Can Someone show me where that is on this chart ? www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview NcSoft is losing money and has been in decline since octobober, the only spike they had was before launch, before pre-orders. The truth of the matte ris after Aions lack luster sale margians , ncsoft is not doing well. Great fluff article though, way to keep the spirits high for a title that is losing more subscriptions then Vanguard at launch. Here is another chart www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/ncscf Again, they have been in decline for over a month now. The stock only oprogressed to 40% in the release date and already has dropped back down to 0%. I'm baffled at how anyone can take any of Ncsoft's P.R. tactics seriously. All the information is online.... |
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11/08/09 9:51:16 AM#62
Originally posted by solareus
As a matter of fact, those links that you provided guided atleast me to sites that show their share price and its recent changes. I thought it was a common knowledge that profit and stock price don't go hand in hand. Also, on Reuters site they are giving a recommandation to buy the share which tells from its either currently too low a price or analysts seeing it as a lucrative investment in the foreseeable future. Hence, all the information is online but this one you provided had nothing to do with the news discussed in here. |
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11/08/09 11:08:53 AM#63
Originally posted by solareus Per what was just said, Stock price and profit are two different things. You can make a profit but have your stock price tumble because of bad news. you can also lose a lot of money in a quarter but an announcement that your new product will provably turn gold to lead will make your stock price soar. Stock prices are fickle. Remember all the hub bub about a year ago with all the bank crud, stock crashes and layoffs? I lost a little over half my worth yet my salary was still the same. A few months go by, my salary was still the same but one of my accounts increased by over 33%. I imagine what will happen is tht the announcement of this profit surge will drive NC's stock up. Also, as someone else stated, if you have a few low quarters, especially with no new prodcucts, you will have low profits. So it really is easy to see that Aion was NC's first major game that is arguably successful, so they sell all of those boxes and the profits went up. But again, only time will tell about retention rates and again, my feeling is 250k to 300k subs. |
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11/08/09 2:58:01 PM#64
Stock prices talk, bullshit walks. If NcSoft is lying about the profit margians to drive up stocks, they will be fined by international regulators. This should be fun to watch .... |
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11/08/09 3:42:46 PM#65
Originally posted by supbro WoW this guy is trashing WoW when NC is practically sponsering all the gold sellers and bots in Aion that's some funny stuff right there. Not to mention he actually thinks this game is challenging lol. Another funny thing is him calling WoW the worst community when i keep reading from this site and other sites that the Aion community is even worse the WoW's. funny how people see things different huh op? I bet you think NC won't introduce a Cash Shop into Aion, guess you never seen the COH/COV game's cash shop? Don't worry your locust guild will migrate to the next game that comes out leaving Aion to die.
WOW has more RMT than any MMO combined, you might need to take those blinders off to see it. And now with their "Asian" style cash shop they are really turning F2P title - Graphically and Community wise their already there lol nice dodging there, can't admit about the bad things in Aion lol, wow has more RMT then any mmo combined? now i know this guy has the brain of an amoeba, sorry amoeba's. With people like you in Aion, WoW's community looks like saints in comparison. Then again you probably don't complain about the bots and gold sellers since you probably use them yourself. No blinders from me by the way, RMT doesn't phase me one bit, i simply don't use it or by gold unlike yourself. "The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand." |
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11/08/09 4:11:55 PM#66
Any company's quarterly financial release is a combination of required disclosure and a public relations event. You read these things and they always say things like "The leading maker of.....", "The most innovative producer of .....". So you have to take their emphasis with a grain of salt if not a complete salt shaker. However, the legal penalties for false statements are such that the truth is there and you can determine some facts.
So from this we can see that NCSoft revenues have been depressed for some time which considering the Tabula Rasa debacle and the recent lawsuit by Garriott that is not much of a surprise and we can see that the sales of their new game have improved both their revenue and profit which is not much of a surprise either.
It is good news though and does give them a bit of breathing room but they need to keep on selling and work on keeping their existing subscribers then when the next quarter results are out we can see how well they have done.
Is Aion a great game? Not yet but it has potential. The game does have issues as some people do run out of content at various times if only briefly (for me I struggled a bit at 29 until the level 30 content became available but that is because I had a bunch of campaign quests I had ignored in order to level). The distraction of gold sellers needs to be controlled and the lack of in game managers is starting to become obvious. Any company can start off good but if you fail to listen to your customers then you are ultimately going to lose them and right now NCSoft needs to decide if they want to listen to their Western customers and take action or not. The choice is theirs but customers are fickle and if they feel they are being ignored or taken advantage of they will take their business elsewhere.
NCSoft is in a better position at this stage with Aion than some other games recently released. There has been a fair amount of hype around the game but it has mostly delivered on what it promised if not completely or as well as many gamers would like. But, they have delivered well enough to buy time to fix the issues. They just need to do it.
It is still too soon to determine if either NCSoft or Aion has succeeded in their goals but the numbers next quarter should provide a much better indication of the fates of both the company and the game. Considering that half of the NCSoft's revenue this quarter came from Aion and only half of that was from the West then that means the US and EU only had about a 25% impact to the company and while that is nice chunk of change NCSoft has shown a willingness to close down products that don't meet their expectations. |
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11/08/09 4:25:36 PM#67
Originally posted by raven222
/laugh - I was thinking the same thing! I'm still loving Aion also :) http://www.recycleyourgames.co.uk - Recycle Your Games and Consoles. Help the Environment and Charity! |
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TheCalamity
Novice Member
Joined: 5/09/09
The only gods are the ones you make of yourselves... |
11/08/09 4:27:29 PM#68
Originally posted by solareus It's not as bad as you make it sound, yeah i dislike aion and play it, but if u look at the 5 year, its up by almost 200% so course its gonna be going up and down with the market lol. I guess people r just looking for cheap entertainment these days :P
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Yamota
 Elite Member
Joined: 10/05/03
Money in politics is the root of all political evil. It is corruption at it's worst. |
11/08/09 4:52:01 PM#69
I am not surprised as it is a solid game. However if it is to keep its momentum they need to add way more content. Two mirror races and 8 classes with minimal customization (stigmas) is not enough to keep people busy for long. |
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11/08/09 4:57:48 PM#70
Originally posted by Yamota
I would agree that more content would be nice but one has to assume that this is in the works but it would be nice to get an idea of where the developers see the game going.
I somewhat agree with only having two races and all the classes mirrored but with the high end being predominately PvP this makes a lot of sense and prevents one side from having any sort of significant advantage over the other if a particular class turns out to be out of balance with its mirror alternate. If they simply made them the same and changed the names and animations people would call it a cheat so I think they are better off with the current story line where the world was torn asunder and the single race has split into divergent lines. This is certainly something they should consider exploring once they get the current issues under control. |
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11/08/09 8:58:50 PM#71
Originally posted by fyerwall
SOE is an Asian company. In case you hadn't noticed ... "Sony Corporation of America, based in New York, NY, is a U.S. subsidiary of Sony Corporation, headquartered in Tokyo." www.sony.com/SCA/corporate.shtml Also just in case you were really not sure |
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11/08/09 9:19:56 PM#72
Originally posted by supbro
AoC sold 700k after 40 days.
http://kotaku.com/5020731/age-of-conan-+-a-million-shipped-700k-registered
Quoted for the ownage :)) Amazing Aion has outsold AoC, considering the hype and marketing behind AoC in the west. It goes to show a stable polished game made by a cutting edge Korean company will always be more successful than a game driven by hype and promised features. Too bad NCSoft can't figure out what to do with a good game like AION....Maybe they should have Blizzard operate it?
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11/08/09 9:24:30 PM#73
Originally posted by avalon1000Too bad NCSoft can't figure out what to do with a good game like AION....Maybe they should have Blizzard operate it? |
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11/08/09 10:17:33 PM#74
Originally posted by Sovrath Per what was just said, Stock price and profit are two different things. You can make a profit but have your stock price tumble because of bad news. Bad news like plummeting subs? |
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11/08/09 11:18:55 PM#75
Originally posted by Regnevanz
SOE is an Asian company. In case you hadn't noticed ... "Sony Corporation of America, based in New York, NY, is a U.S. subsidiary of Sony Corporation, headquartered in Tokyo." www.sony.com/SCA/corporate.shtml Also just in case you were really not sure NCSoft is based out of and HQ'd in Korea. SOE is based out of and HQ'd in California. Yes, SOE is a subsidiary of a multinational corporation based in Tokyo, Japan. But, the company Sony Online Entertainment was formed in 1995 as Verant studios in the US and later bought by a division of Sony Pictures that later became SOE. So yeah, they may be an owned subsidiary of a mainly Japanese corporation, but the games they make are based out of and created in the US. Meanwhile Aion is a game that was created in Korea by NCSoft, where they are based. NCSoft was started in Korea and has been making games for the asian market for many years before they even opened a US base of operations. Most of NCSofts games still come from Korea (Lineage, Lineage 2, Aion, etc). So yeah, my point still stands valid. There are 3 types of people in the world.
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Yamota
Elite Member
Joined: 10/05/03
Money in politics is the root of all political evil. It is corruption at it's worst. |
11/09/09 3:49:57 AM#76
Originally posted by Zorndorf
And those boxes sit now on western dealer's shelves. And they sit and sit ... Just like the rest of those unsold 1.2 M WAR boxes with 5/5 servers to support the unsold units :) Get a grip Aion has 14NA/18EU non full servers. That's the equivalent of 250K western subs... and rapidly declinging according to Xfire. You really have to be blind to believe this Korean is going to stay in player's minds.
Where do you get 250k from? The 18+14 = 32 servers are about half full (I take that from half of them listed as full and half as recommended). One Lineage 2 server had a maximum capacity of 5000. Since it is the same company, and a newer game, one would assume that Aion servers has atleast that high max capacity. So half full servers would be 2500 concurrent players. 2500x32 = 80.000 concurrent subscribers. A typical number used is that 15% of subscribers is the peak concurrent subscribers. So that gives us 80.000/0.15 = 533.000 subscribers. With 970.000 boxes sold that is (533.000-970.000)/970.000 = -0.45 which is a 45% drop of subs which coincidently is about the same drop as XFire shows. So the current subscriber base is around 525.000, give or take 50.000, not 250.000. If it would be 250.000 then the drop would be (250.000-970.000)/970.000 = -0.74 which is a 74% drop and there is nothing to indicate that huge drop (including XFire trends that you like to use). Also I am playing the game and I think I would notice a 74% drop and I dont. The zones are full and the chat channels are constantly cluttered with people LFG. Aion is not the next generation of MMORPG but it is a very solid one, very solid WoW clone to some extent but still very solid.
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11/09/09 5:19:02 AM#77
Originally posted by Zorndorf
You have a little problem there... Because NScoft bragged that ... at launch ... that 60% of their player base was playing at the same time ... :))) http://uk.aiononline.com/board/notices/view?articleID=164&page=2 I'll quote ... to make it easy on you: "In preparation for Aion’s launch, we ran calculations of our presale numbers with historical conversion ratios and expected concurrency numbers, which led to our determination of launch day server needs. In addition, we had a 25 percent additional capacity in hardware reserve and the ability to increase server population. We’ve further responded to the overwhelming demand by adding additional server worlds in all languages, and still we are working around the clock to address the incredible demand. For example, we’re seeing timeframes where 60 percent or more of our players are playing at any given time. This is a significant event by any MMO standard. Another surprising development is how long players are staying in game—I think that’s a testament to the enjoyable nature of the product. " --------- Now some technical info: 12NA/12EU servers were not enough to solve those 60% of the players logging in. Aion launched with "almost" 400K pre-orders (including those that always pre order and "forget" to collect the real thing so they have a few days of trial). 12NA/12EU means around a 200K max capacity. Clearly not enough for the 400K of which (NCOSFT SOURCE ITSELF) said 60% was trying to get in ... So they upped it to 14NA/18EU (I myself predicted BEFORE launch they would need 16NA/18EU), having a nice 240K possibilty.
----> I don't know where you get that ridiculously low 15% average in btw. As Mark Jaobs himself said that at the launching month around 1/3 players are logged in in a new MMO concurrently time). For older mmorpg's the ratio is between 1/3 and 1/4 , so between 25 and 33% logging in. You can see this from AIon itself btw: Korean had 400 K subs (with 41 servers) and China at the launching week had 113 servers for 1 M (free! at the time) playing players. Take your (extreme low) 15% (see the bragging of NCsoft 60% themselves) to 30% and you come up with the exact same figures of me: 250K. Edit: those 970K were shipped to shops (at the end of the quarter). FAR from every box was sold to customers too at this time. They sell it to the retailers, but those boxes still sit on dealers shelves today. In no way are 14US/18EU servers enough to hold the subs you mention (see above the Korea and China Aion situations at launch).
Aion sold 450k before launch:
http://us.ncsoft.com/en/news/press-releases/aion-launch.html
After launch and with all the Qeues, 500k is the minimum logical sale figure, the launch period saw login issues where Qeues exceeded the maximum display limit of 3000 for Qeues, at which time 60% of players tried to login. But, no one knows how many were trying to login. Liv mentioned a percentage not a figure.
The maximum concurent player capacity for servers is not the total number of subscribers, capacity which was greatly reduced from all the players abusing Private shops to stay logged in. And NCsoft locking factions to preserve balance.
After about 2 weeks, NCsoft added a 30min auto-dc timer to private shops, increased server capacity by 25%. And added new servers with the increased capacity.Then there is the normal reduction of the percentage of players trying to login at any given time, which is expected after 2 weeks of the launch of any MMO, where the time and length of playing sessions normalizes. These factors resolved Qeue issues.
The point to be made is simple. You can't estimate the number of subsribers from max server capacity, its a flawed logic. 60% refers to an unknown number of players at a timeframe where server capacity was not fully efficient. No one knows what is the percentage of concurrent players 2 weeks after launch and now. It could be anything from 10% to 30%.
I know for sure i only play 1 or 2 hours per day and mostly at off-peak time, not everyone plays 4 hours+ for sure. Some even only play the game every couple of days. But they pay the full subsctiption.
This propagnda is getting quiet boring, people who dislike Aion should leave to Blizzards pet-shop and enjoy paying 10$ for a few pixels.
Improve Aion's Graphics with a simple text file that you can create by yourself: -Increase in-game Field of View to 175% or more -Increase view distance for players to 100 meters with camera at max distance -Lots of other settings Learn how by reading this guide at Aionsource http://www.aionsource.com/forum/general-guides/84379-definite-guide-aions-graphical-settings-performance-tips.html |
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Yamota
Elite Member
Joined: 10/05/03
Money in politics is the root of all political evil. It is corruption at it's worst. |
11/09/09 6:22:08 AM#78
Originally posted by Zorndorf
You have a little problem there... Because NScoft bragged that ... at launch ... that 60% of their player base was playing at the same time ... :))) http://uk.aiononline.com/board/notices/view?articleID=164&page=2 I'll quote ... to make it easy on you: "In preparation for Aion’s launch, we ran calculations of our presale numbers with historical conversion ratios and expected concurrency numbers, which led to our determination of launch day server needs. In addition, we had a 25 percent additional capacity in hardware reserve and the ability to increase server population. We’ve further responded to the overwhelming demand by adding additional server worlds in all languages, and still we are working around the clock to address the incredible demand. For example, we’re seeing timeframes where 60 percent or more of our players are playing at any given time. This is a significant event by any MMO standard. Another surprising development is how long players are staying in game—I think that’s a testament to the enjoyable nature of the product. " --------- Now some technical info: 12NA/12EU servers were not enough to solve those 60% of the players logging in. Aion launched with "almost" 400K pre-orders (including those that always pre order and "forget" to collect the real thing so they have a few days of trial). 12NA/12EU means around a 200K max capacity. Clearly not enough for the 400K of which (NCOSFT SOURCE ITSELF) said 60% was trying to get in ... So they upped it to 14NA/18EU (I myself predicted BEFORE launch they would need 16NA/18EU), having a nice 240K possibilty.
----> I don't know where you get that ridiculously low 15% average in btw. As Mark Jaobs himself said that at the launching month around 1/3 players are logged in in a new MMO concurrently time). For older mmorpg's the ratio is between 1/3 and 1/4 , so between 25 and 33% logging in. You can see this from AIon itself btw: Korean had 400 K subs (with 41 servers) and China at the launching week had 113 servers for 1 M (free! at the time) playing players. Take your (extreme low) 15% (see the bragging of NCsoft 60% themselves) to 30% and you come up with the exact same figures of me: 250K. Edit: those 970K were shipped to shops (at the end of the quarter). FAR from every box was sold to customers too at this time. They sell it to the retailers, but those boxes still sit on dealers shelves today. In no way are 14US/18EU servers enough to hold the subs you mention (see above the Korea and China Aion situations at launch). 12/12 means 200k max capacity? Where do you get these kind of numbers that you just pull out? Aion sold had about 400k PRE-ORDERs sold. That means that there was atleast 400k subscribers but also a an unknown number of people who bought the game after. So lets say 200k bought it "normally" (i.e. not pre-orders) up to couple of weeks after. That gives about 600k subscribers. 600.000*0.15 = 90.000 concurrent players. 90.000/24 = 3750 people per server. That is pretty high but reasonable number but keep in mind that the 15% people of concurrent users is for an established MMORPG (i.e. not recently launched). So close to release more than 15% would be logged at peak times which would probably be the reason of those extra servers. So to conclude: 15% is the average percentage used for an MMORPG but obviously not right after launch which could see peak numbers of much higher. However now it is long since launch and that 15% is more likely to be correct. So I will stick with my 500k subscribers, all the data I have seen (from official sources) indicate that. EDIT: I dont know where you get the 970k shipped to stores. The article clearly says: "As part of its third-quarter earnings announcement today, NCsoft said that Aion has now sold more than 500,000 units in North America and 470,000 copies in Europe." For me "sold" is not the same as shipped to stores. I dont know where you get that from. |
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11/09/09 9:23:29 AM#79
Like WAR and AOC, Aion has sold a lot of copies. I'm surprised they didn't release the sub numbers at this point, since it's when they are likely to be at their highest. That in itself is an indicator of how Aion is doing. If it was doing well, they would jump at the opportunity to put those sub numbers out in the public eye, rather than going the AoC/WAR route and release units sold instead. They were aiming for 2nd spot in Western market, so if they had 350k subs they would say they accomplished their goal. That hasn't happened yet, so it'll be interesting to see the trends in x-fire and official sources to see how Aion does in the coming months. |
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11/09/09 9:44:31 AM#80
Originally posted by MMMOGIRL OH, I'm sorry you where not smart enough to look for those quests past level 25. Yes lag is terrible in the abyss during sieges but they are working to fix it. As for the PvP in the abyss well considering many people are already 35+ in the game already yeah there will be some PvP mis-matches.  |
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