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  1. #1
    Scarab Lord Karizee's Avatar
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    NCsoft 3Q report shows GW2 at top of global sales

    Valar morghulis

  2. #2
    The Lightbringer barackopala's Avatar
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    Impressively enough L1 still sells like pankakes D:!

  3. #3
    Korea really makes our region seem shameful
    What's L1 and L2 by the way?

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by Soul Hermit View Post
    Korea really makes our region seem shameful
    What's L1 and L2 by the way?
    Lineage 1 & 2.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Soul Hermit View Post
    Korea really makes our region seem shameful
    What's L1 and L2 by the way?
    Lineage 1 and 2.

  6. #6
    Scarab Lord Karizee's Avatar
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    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lineage_(video_game)

    Lineage - a medivial fantasy mmorpg, 43 million players, played mostly in Korea.
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  7. #7
    Titan draykorinee's Avatar
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    I was confused by the title, so its actually that GW2 has sold more globally than other ncsoft titles, thought for a second they had topped global sales which would have been interesting :P
    Be good to see next quarters and see just how well the cash shop and any further sales go, it was always going to be a good quarter for ncsoft.

  8. #8
    Lineage is still the king, blade & soul pulls 2/3 of GW2's revenue even though it's only sold in Korea and China at a lower price point (around 20USD), and looking at the PDF, NCSoft deferred its previous quarter's profits to this one to artificially inflate numbers for this quarter. Someone in the company is about to start shorting stock.

    In a way, this was an interesting comparison of profitability of Eastern market vs Western one. GW2 was available in NA/EU/OC. B&S was two months before GW2's release in SK (but deferred from previous quarter's profits and into this one) and a few weeks in CH. Both were "optimized" for their region in terms of game design. I guess there goes the popular misconception that blizzard isn't making much money with their Chinese version of WoW.

  9. #9
    I am Murloc! Ravenblade's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lucky_ View Post
    In a way, this was an interesting comparison of profitability of Eastern market vs Western one. GW2 was available in NA/EU/OC. B&S was two months before GW2's release in SK (but deferred from previous quarter's profits and into this one) and a few weeks in CH. Both were "optimized" for their region in terms of game design. I guess there goes the popular misconception that blizzard isn't making much money with their Chinese version of WoW.
    Hah, I must admit I was thinking "What the heck? Slovakia and Switzerland are getting special treatment?".
    I believe Blizzard will do or already did make quite a lot profit off the sales in China as well it's just their subscription model which differs and there I believe they don't make as much money per subscriber/player than on the Western market.
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  10. #10
    Scarab Lord Karizee's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lucky_ View Post
    Lineage is still the king, blade & soul pulls 2/3 of GW2's revenue even though it's only sold in Korea and China at a lower price point (around 20USD), and looking at the PDF, NCSoft deferred its previous quarter's profits to this one to artificially inflate numbers for this quarter. Someone in the company is about to start shorting stock.
    Blade & Soul has a $20 per month sub in Korea.
    http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/06...roning-diablo/

    According to GAAP, revenues are recognized in the period they are earned - not received. So if you are referring to GW2 pre-sales not recognized until the game's release, you are correct. This is how it is done for all publicly traded companies. If you pay your phone bill 3 months ahead, your phone company does not recognize the revenue until each specific month. This keeps things true and prevents manipulation.

    Nice try at being alarmist though



    Quote Originally Posted by Lucky_ View Post
    In a way, this was an interesting comparison of profitability of Eastern market vs Western one. GW2 was available in NA/EU/OC. B&S was two months before GW2's release in SK (but deferred from previous quarter's profits and into this one) and a few weeks in CH. Both were "optimized" for their region in terms of game design. I guess there goes the popular misconception that blizzard isn't making much money with their Chinese version of WoW.
    What does Blizzard have to do with this thread?
    Valar morghulis

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Karizee View Post
    What does Blizzard have to do with this thread?
    Give that guy some slack, he was making an observation.

    OT: Good, now help ANET get some better Customer Support, the only real problem with GW2.

  12. #12
    Either they got $21 of revenue from a box, or "2 million sales" is a hoax. If we assume the shops take 100%, where did $20 go?

  13. #13
    Scarab Lord Karizee's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tackhisis View Post
    Either they got $21 of revenue from a box, or "2 million sales" is a hoax. If we assume the shops take 100%, where did $20 go?
    NCsoft is the publisher, they only get a portion of the sale. ArenaNet takes the greater portion as the developer of the game.

    2 different companies.
    Valar morghulis

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by Karizee View Post
    NCsoft is the publisher, they only get a portion of the sale. ArenaNet takes the greater portion as the developer of the game.

    2 different companies.
    Arenanet is wholly owned subsidiary of NCSoft, making this statement either completely false, or going after some hidden meaning.

  15. #15
    Scarab Lord Karizee's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lucky_ View Post
    Arenanet is wholly owned subsidiary of NCSoft, making this statement either completely false, or going after some hidden meaning.

    For accounting and tax purposes they are two different companies.

    NCsoft is a publicly traded company. ArenaNet is not.

    Income from subsidiary companies is not presented as income on the parent organization. The value of the subsidiary is presented as an asset on the parent company's balance sheet.

    Say Arenanet had a subsidiary...let's call it ABC Toy Trains Co. The toy trains that ABC sells is not presented as ArenaNet's toy train sales nor as NCsoft's toy train sales as neither of those companies sell toy trains.

    It's Accounting 101.

    Some of the income from GW2 is presented on NCsoft's income statement. That is due to their relationship with their subsidiary as the publisher of the game. Only the publisher portion is presented as income for NCsoft.
    Valar morghulis

  16. #16
    It's also wholly irrelevant to the topic at hand. It's in direct interest of parent company to maximize profit from each subsidiary, as this reflects positively on its stock. As a result we can safely assume that the actual revenue and profit of the subsidiary is visible on the sheet.

    Otherwise we'd have "other subsidiaries/sources" paragraph on the sheet instead.

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by Lucky_ View Post
    It's also wholly irrelevant to the topic at hand. It's in direct interest of parent company to maximize profit from each subsidiary, as this reflects positively on its stock. As a result we can safely assume that the actual revenue and profit of the subsidiary is visible on the sheet.

    Otherwise we'd have "other subsidiaries/sources" paragraph on the sheet instead.
    It's quite obvious to me that Karizee has either taken several accounting classes or may even be an accountant. I wasn't an accounting major in college, I was an econ major but I took enough accounting classes to know that it is a very black & white subject. From what I remember of the classes I took, Karizee is totally correct.

    Just because one company owns the other doesn't mean that they don't transact business together exactly like they would if they were completely separate. NCSoft is serving as publisher for ArenaNet. NCSoft receives a fee for that service from Arenanet and that has to be accounted for. They can't just say, 'well we own you so we're not going to bother recording this transaction.'

  18. #18
    You're missing the point: it makes no sense NOT TO. They certainly can engage in massive amount of accounting shenanigans. You don't need accounting classes to know this, basic classes on how economics and quarterly reporting works are enough.

    But as pointed above, it makes no sense for them not to inflate sales and revenues from any given title to as high as they can rather than deflate, which is what karizee seems to suggest. This is standard practice in the industry.

  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by Osprey39 View Post

    Just because one company owns the other doesn't mean that they don't transact business together exactly like they would if they were completely separate. NCSoft is serving as publisher for ArenaNet.'
    except they're no longer their publisher, they're their owner.
    the standard relation of publisher owned developer isn't a nice one, its generally one of swords of Damocles and only the bare minimum funding to complete tasks.

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by Karizee View Post
    For accounting and tax purposes they are two different companies.

    NCsoft is a publicly traded company. ArenaNet is not.

    Income from subsidiary companies is not presented as income on the parent organization. The value of the subsidiary is presented as an asset on the parent company's balance sheet.

    Say Arenanet had a subsidiary...let's call it ABC Toy Trains Co. The toy trains that ABC sells is not presented as ArenaNet's toy train sales nor as NCsoft's toy train sales as neither of those companies sell toy trains.

    It's Accounting 101.

    Some of the income from GW2 is presented on NCsoft's income statement. That is due to their relationship with their subsidiary as the publisher of the game. Only the publisher portion is presented as income for NCsoft.
    Wrong.

    NCSoft OWNS ArenaNet. So all revenue HAS TO BE presented as the global income.

    You are confusing with Blizzard and Activision which both have seperate revenue tables for their stockholders but Activision doesn't own Blizzard as an identity.

    That's the reason why Blizzard publishes its own games and you will never see Activision on a Blizzard box or game (not even the card games or puppets published by Blizzarrd. In their official stock holder reports you see a clear distinction between the 2.


    ---

    That's not the case with NCSoft. NCSoft owns ArenaNet and presents its total global revenue for all games they own.

    As a matter of fact NCSoft were always rather shady with their stock holders info as they don't need to comply to US official stock rated rules AND 3rd party audit policies . (They are a strict Korean publisher and only need to obey to Korean stock rules.)

    I would say that the total revenue of GW2 is questionable at best and hardly is in accordance with the mentioned 2 million copies sold.

    I still remember the so called 4 million wide spread rumour of Aion, which never materialised in their financial spreadsheets either.

    Questionable.? very much.

    As from a technical point of view: hard to imagine all those 2 million players reside on this few number of servers...

    Always look at the number of servers and you get a pretty good idea about pops ...playing
    Last edited by BenBos; 2012-11-11 at 11:53 PM.

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