NCsoft Q3 2017 Earnings

[Lord of Rings.5371]

NCsoft 2017 Earnings

[Erasculio.2914]

The main issue with HoT's earnings is that, on the quarter after release, they fell back down to the falling pattern seen before the expansion was released.

In other words, it looked like the expansion didn't bring long term gain to ArenaNet; if anything, it gave the impression that units were sold to the current players, and that was it.

Now, the earnings from PoF appear to be less than those from HoT, but looks can be deceiving here. I'm more interested on what will happen on the long term - if the following quarters will return to a falling pattern from 13,557, or if there will be sustained gain with the new expansion.

[particlepinata.9865]

I personally think we will have to wait for the Q4 earnings report to conclude things. Q3 is only 1 and a half week of Pof from release. Hot had a longer hype period before the expac released, and many prepurchased blindly and got disappointed because the game was the opposite of casual friendly. It could be that people where more critical beforehand than in the past. We will have to wait and see how it performs in that most important time of the year for sales.

[troops.8276]

Mobile games revenue is huge in comparison.NA/EU contribution to NCsofts overall sales are very small.More cash shop focus and GW3 Mobile any time soon I wonder.

[TexZero.7910]

They must have mixed MxM into mobile games....or its just absent for whatever reason.

[DanteZero.9736]

Seeing this chart makes me concerned for the future of ArenaNet as a company and Guild Wars 2.I'm worried NCSoft might pull a City of Heroes/Villains on Anet.

[Coulter.2315]

Everyone should consider these graphs when complaining about the mount stable, remember PoF was cheaper than HoT. I hope the sales jump up for Q4 because HoT was reaching 37Bil after its launch.

[morrolan.9608]

Figures are definitely concerning however we will have to wait for next quarters earnings to get the full picture on PoF. I will say that having lowered the price anet would have expected to sell more units and that doesn't appear to have happened

[Alga.6498]

This does not look good for us, :confused: :cry:

[Behellagh.1468]

Horse hockey. GW2 is still a major force in NA and Europe. Mobile looks like it was a HUGE pull in Korea as the income from that area more than triple with income from Taiwan and Japan being relatively flat. NCSoft is launching their mobile Lineage II game in the US and they are throwing bucks into it. Twitchcon had Conan O'Brien at the Lineage II Mobile game booth one day of the con.

[Nereikia.3507]

My lil message> @particlepinata.9865 said:

I personally think we will have to wait for the Q4 earnings report to conclude things. Q3 is only 1 and a half week of Pof from release.

Pre-purchase started on august 1. Don't lie to yourself: the only reason q4 can be better is due to those rng-lootboxes, even ncsoft admitted that indirectly in their report.

But the thing is their money is none of our business. What really makes me sad is how bad PoF (and the current state of the game in general) is. That's a shame.

[battledrone.8315]

this doesnt look good at all, roughly on par with older games, and outperformed grossly by B&Si have tried AION , that game is nowhere near the quality of GW2im quite baffled by this..what did Anet spend all those money on?

[TheRandomGuy.7246]

No marketing to bring in new players. No endgame to keep old players. Not surprised.

[Nejul.8415]

This can't be right. Gw2 is the best mmo out there.

[maddoctor.2738]

So Guild Wars 2 went back to between Q1 2015 revenue (20026) and Q3 2015 (20699) (Pre Heart of Thorns both)

[maddoctor.2738]

@Nereikia.3507 said:But the thing is their money is none of our business. What really makes me sad is how bad PoF (and the current state of the game in general) is. That's a shame.

Keep in mind that Path of Fire is half price compared to Heart of Thorns so having less revenue is a given, provided the player base didn't grow in the mean time. Now how much lower we'll see.

[battledrone.8315]

@TheRandomGuy.7246 said:No marketing to bring in new players. No endgame to keep old players. Not surprised.

1: i see plenty of PoF ads on the web, the problem is, that you wont attract many NEW players with END GAME content2: they havent made anything BUT end game content, since the game launched, and now we have the consequences of that..there is mostly whales and F2Pers left

[Turin.6921]

These sales are with 1.5 weeks of selling PoF and all the other games are published in Asia as well. The sales look decent. They are even higher than the forecast.

[TheRandomGuy.7246]

@battledrone.8315 said:

@TheRandomGuy.7246 said:No marketing to bring in new players. No endgame to keep old players. Not surprised.

1: i see plenty of PoF ads on the web, the problem is, that you wont attract many NEW players with END GAME content2: they havent made anything BUT end game content, since the game launched, and now we have the consequences of that..there is mostly whales and F2Pers left

Random banner with "Buy PoF" is good if people know what it is. I doubt anyone gonna do research about every popup that is probably blocked by the ad block in the first place.4 raid wings and 3 fractals in 2 years. 1 dungeon in 5 years. All this endgame.

[GrubySzymek.1362]

@TheRandomGuy.7246 said:

@battledrone.8315 said:

@TheRandomGuy.7246 said:No marketing to bring in new players. No endgame to keep old players. Not surprised.

1: i see plenty of PoF ads on the web, the problem is, that you wont attract many NEW players with END GAME content2: they havent made anything BUT end game content, since the game launched, and now we have the consequences of that..there is mostly whales and F2Pers left

Random banner with "Buy PoF" is good if people know what it is. I doubt anyone gonna do research about every popup that is probably blocked by the ad block in the first place.4 raid wings and 3 fractals in 2 years. 1 dungeon in 5 years. All this endgame.

about pop ups it's also worth mentioning contextual adverts are based on your cookies, so you'll only see PoF ad if you're already interested in the game

[Cyninja.2954]

And yet we get all these threads about how more stuff should be free, how people deserve more for their purchase price of vanilla GW2 over 5 years ago, how convenience items and cosmetics should be cheaper or free.

Suddenly an earnigs report comes out and every one is concerned the game might die. Hilarious.

On topic, I do believe Q4 will be important to lool at. Longterm revenue is of importance and arenanet has been selling more and more items via the gemstore as well as people being reluctant to purchase PoF an release (as well as its lower price tag compared to HoT). If the revenue remains stable, spikes become less important.

I do expect more and more stuff on the gem store. Hopefully nothing pay to win.

[Danikat.8537]

This is your quarterly reminder that these graphs do not show the amount of money players have spent on GW2 (or any other NCSoft game), only the profit NCSoft made from them. Therefore it can be affected by any number of things, many of which we have no information on.

This includes, but is not limited to:

• The exchange rate between US Dollars and Korean Won
• Anet's costs
• The percentage Anet is allowed to keep as profit
• Marketing budget
• Money set aside for future development

And probably a dozen other things I've not thought of. It's really annoying to have an incomplete picture, but unless and until Anet becomes a publicly traded company and has to publish full financial details for their shareholders (read: never) all we have to go on is one of the end points of their finances. Trying to work out exactly how much they made originally from that would be like trying to work out your salary from what you have in your wallet on payday.

(I also think it's worth remembering that every single time one of these comes out it's taken as proof that the game is struggling at best, or more likely dying and NCSoft are likely to shut it down soon unless Anet does something....usually whatever is top of that poster's personal list of desired additions/changes.)

IMO a better indication of how GW2 is doing will be the announcement of Season 4 of the Living Story. If the game is struggling and especially if it's in financial trouble they're highly unlikely to start developing a large (and therefore expensive) series of new releases to give away free to the majority of players.

[maddoctor.2738]

@Cyninja.2954 said:On topic, I do believe Q4 will be important to lool at. Longterm revenue is of importance and arenanet has been selling more and more items via the gemstore as well as people being reluctant to purchase PoF an release (as well as its lower price tag compared to HoT). If the revenue remains stable, spikes become less important.

I hope some time in the near future someone at Arenanet opens the subject of "free to play" and instead of finding ways to annoy their loyal customers (like with the mount skins) they find ways to convince free players to buy the game. That huge un-tapped potential is there, waiting to get some attention.Adding Gliding in Core Tyria, Mounts in Core Tyria, even the Halloween Labyrinth race that was only really doable on a Mount, are all ways to persuade the free players (or simple core game owners) to buy the expansion.According to an old report, when the game went free to play, the active population doubled, but what happened to all those players? Finding why and then "fixing" it if possible is the way to make huge amounts of money in my opinion, without upsetting the current/loyal players with bad RNG gem store deals.

[GrubySzymek.1362]

And yet we get all these threads about how more stuff should be free, how people deserve more for their purchase price of vanilla GW2 over 5 years ago, how convenience items and cosmetics should be cheaper or free.

how about not selling rng scam boxes?

how about putting into gemstore skins people want instead of making them yearly promos?

how about considering going back to armor set creation and put them into gemstore?

how about reconsidering some prices, to sell for less but sell more?

[troops.8276]

The graph is listed under Sales Breakdown by IP in the full report.NCsoft total sales for Q3 are 727 billion won and net profit for Q3 is 275 billion won, about $246 million USD.