Guild Wars 2

For your viewing pleasure.

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Global Earnings

Edit: added graph made by Zok.4956, from his post:

Poor Wildstar.

…….

As I’ve mentioned, the more interesting figure and subsequent analysis will be Q1 2016 compared to Q3 2015 (pre-HoT) and Q4 2014 (pre-HoT-hype from PAX).

Anyone claiming the expansion itself didn’t sell well is an idiot. What matters are going to be the churn rates thereafter.

Not impressed with the numbers overall, gw2 could do so much better.

Swagger.1459:

Not impressed with the numbers overall, gw2 could do so much better.

So could everything ever.

DeceiverX.8361:

As I’ve mentioned, the more interesting figure and subsequent analysis will be Q1 2016 compared to Q3 2015 (pre-HoT) and Q4 2014 (pre-HoT-hype from PAX).

Anyone claiming the expansion itself didn’t sell well is an idiot.

So NCSoft are idiots then?

Total revenue from GW2 only increased by 85% for that quarter, a quarter in which they sold a $60 expansion compared to gem sales for the previous quarter, it didn’t even double the sales revenue, thats poor.

I also note that many were rubbishing Daewoo for its predictions a couple of weeks ago yet the actual results are even weaker than those predictions.

Lol ofcourse sales went up with that nasty pre-purchase scam going on, not that some fancy graph on a random site should be taken seriously tho.

Kattenpootjes.4291:

Lol ofcourse sales went up with that nasty pre-purchase scam going on, not that some fancy graph on a random site should be taken seriously tho.

Random site being NCSOFT’s official earnings report? Like do you think they are lying or something?

“HoT performance is weaker than expected. The conversion from F2P/core game to HoT is weaker than expected. They look for the reasons for this”

Reason 1… Profession designs are extremely poor and continued profession development is equally as poor.

2.0 revamp your profession. Y’all built in some decent combat mechanics (smooth gameplay feel and freedom of movement) and gave players completely subpar profession designs. Look up Paragonwiki for your future profession and combat and “powers” design role models.

Professions and combat are the #1 aspects of the game. Fix this stuff and it will improve every other area of the game, and make players more likely to spend more money.

Good luck.

Just because sales of the expansion are higher than the other games is just a reflection of the hype behind the product not actual quality of the product. Overall, NCSoft recorded a net loss of 28% for 2015. http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20160211000229

Kattenpootjes.4291:

Lol ofcourse sales went up with that nasty pre-purchase scam going on, not that some fancy graph on a random site should be taken seriously tho.

Q4 sales are Oct, Nov, Dec, so almost entirely regular purchase, not pre-purchase.

• The first beta was in March (Q1).
• Sales boost in Q2, when pre-purchase began in earnest.
• Drop in sales in Q3, after the deadline to get the extra toon slot (register by June).
• Q4 sales (again, representing mostly post-release dates) are over 50% higher than Q2 (representing the peak of pre-purchase sales).

So no, sales didn’t go up because of pre-purchase; they went up in spite of the the 10% boost that pre-purchase provided in Q2 (compared to both Q1 and Q3).

It’s fine to dislike the price and it’s fine to be upset with the changes to the game. Don’t let that close your mind to the fact that in terms of raw sales, the expac has been successful.

Still, as others have mentioned, ‘sales’ is just one metric in measuring success (and of course, it doesn’t tell us how high ANet expected sales to go).

Raw sales are just a reflection of advertising and hype and nothing to do with success of the expansion in terms of product quality. If you think that the expansion in terms of quality of the product have been a success, then I guess you have a different definition of success.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Q4 sales are Oct, Nov, Dec, so almost entirely regular purchase, not pre-purchase.

• The first beta was in March (Q1).
• Sales boost in Q2, when pre-purchase began in earnest.
• Drop in sales in Q3, after the deadline to get the extra toon slot (register by June).
• Q4 sales (again, representing mostly post-release dates) are over 50% higher than Q2 (representing the peak of pre-purchase sales).

So no, sales didn’t go up because of pre-purchase; they went up in spite of the the 10% boost that pre-purchase provided in Q2 (compared to both Q1 and Q3).

Revenue on the xpac would only have been booked as revenue in the December quarter when they delivered the product. In earlier quarters they took the cash from pre-purchases but did not book it as revenue.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Kattenpootjes.4291:

Lol ofcourse sales went up with that nasty pre-purchase scam going on, not that some fancy graph on a random site should be taken seriously tho.

Q4 sales are Oct, Nov, Dec, so almost entirely regular purchase, not pre-purchase.

• The first beta was in March (Q1).
• Sales boost in Q2, when pre-purchase began in earnest.
• Drop in sales in Q3, after the deadline to get the extra toon slot (register by June).
• Q4 sales (again, representing mostly post-release dates) are over 50% higher than Q2 (representing the peak of pre-purchase sales).

So no, sales didn’t go up because of pre-purchase; they went up in spite of the the 10% boost that pre-purchase provided in Q2 (compared to both Q1 and Q3).

It’s fine to dislike the price and it’s fine to be upset with the changes to the game. Don’t let that close your mind to the fact that in terms of raw sales, the expac has been successful.

Still, as others have mentioned, ‘sales’ is just one metric in measuring success (and of course, it doesn’t tell us how high ANet expected sales to go).

The sales of 4 Q15 contain all sold copies of HoT. Pre-purchase started June 16th. This results in an inflated value for 4Q 15. The values for 2Q and 3Q are artificially reduced. In 3Q 15 the players generated sales of 20 bln Won excluding any sold HoT copy. This shows a very strong base line of sales mostly driven by gems.

In the news just now. Guild Wars 2 for mobile?
http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20160211000566

Very interesting that Guild Wars 2 was not mentioned. And never is. Maybe because no one really cares about it. Ask anyone in the Korean market, which make up the lion share of MMO gamers, about GW2 and you will get a blank look of “Guild Wars Who?” LMAO.

crussell.8504:

In the news just now. Guild Wars 2 for mobile?
http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20160211000566

Very interesting that Guild Wars 2 was not mentioned. And never is. Maybe because no one really cares about it. Ask anyone in the Korean market, which make up the lion share of MMO gamers, about GW2 and you will get a blank look of “Guild Wars Who?” LMAO.

No, the ncsoft mobile games projected to come are “master x master” and “lineage something”…

Question is, why do people care so much about how much profit NCSoft makes or doesn’t make? Let’s face it. With the current state of the game and the engine it’s built on, I reckon within the next 2 years tops GW2 will be about as popular as Kim Jong Eun’s hair style. Which is pretty fab if I do say so myself.

crussell.8504:

Question is, why do people care so much about how much profit NCSoft makes or doesn’t make? Let’s face it. With the current state of the game and the engine it’s built on, I reckon within the next 2 years tops GW2 will be about as popular as Kim Jong Eun’s hair style. Which is pretty fab if I do say so myself.

Because it’s players that care about Guild Wars 2 future.

I’m personally glad Guild Wars 2 is doing well.

crussell.8504:

In the news just now. Guild Wars 2 for mobile?
http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20160211000566

Very interesting that Guild Wars 2 was not mentioned. And never is. Maybe because no one really cares about it. Ask anyone in the Korean market, which make up the lion share of MMO gamers, about GW2 and you will get a blank look of “Guild Wars Who?” LMAO.

i dont think GW2 ever got a korean release? :s

Phy.2913:

Poor Wildstar.

…….

Looks like it went up by a decent amount.

Khyan.7039:

crussell.8504:

Question is, why do people care so much about how much profit NCSoft makes or doesn’t make? Let’s face it. With the current state of the game and the engine it’s built on, I reckon within the next 2 years tops GW2 will be about as popular as Kim Jong Eun’s hair style. Which is pretty fab if I do say so myself.

Because it’s players that care about Guild Wars 2 future.

I’m personally glad Guild Wars 2 is doing well.

But its not doing well based on those figures. They couldn’t sustain ongoing development on the base gem sales and the HOT sales are clearly disappointing and not enough to sustain the game until the next xpac.

Phy.2913:

Poor Wildstar.

…….

It’s sad because the game is actually pretty kitten good. Hopefully the steam and china release will help a bit there.

I just read the earnings report and nothing in there stated that it performed poorly. I know that some people are disappointed with the expansion but there’s no need to twist the earnings report towards a direction that itself doesn’t even support.

crussell.8504:

Question is, why do people care so much about how much profit NCSoft makes or doesn’t make? Let’s face it. With the current state of the game and the engine it’s built on, I reckon within the next 2 years tops GW2 will be about as popular as Kim Jong Eun’s hair style. Which is pretty fab if I do say so myself.

Because if it isn’t profitable enough NCsoft may kill it, even if it is still making a profit. It happened to CoH and it can happen to you.

Ayrilana.1396:

I just read the earnings report and nothing in there stated that it performed poorly. I know that some people are disappointed with the expansion but there’s no need to twist the earnings report towards a direction that itself doesn’t even support.

NCSoft state it in the earnings call.

Just to get this straight for my own understanding:
In 3Q15, GW2 sold around 21K copies of Core GW2 for a vastly reduced price.
In 4Q15, GW2 sold around 37K copies of HoT GW2 for the full price.
Regarding copies sold, it is the 3rd best game behind Lineage and B&S of NCSoft in the last 5 Qs.
B&S was released in 1Q16 in the western hemisphere, so you can expect a spike in sales for that quarter.

I honestly would have expected it to skyrocket much more compared to 3Q15.

Torolan.5816:

Just to get this straight for my own understanding:
In 3Q15, GW2 sold around 21K copies of Core GW2 for a vastly reduced price.
In 4Q15, GW2 sold around 37K copies of HoT GW2 for the full price.
Regarding copies sold, it is the 3rd best game behind Lineage and B&S of NCSoft in the last 5 Qs.
B&S was released in 1Q16 in the western hemisphere, so you can expect a spike in sales for that quarter.

I honestly would have expected it to skyrocket much more compared to 3Q15.

That’s not showing copies sold. They sold maybe 517K copies not counting regular gem sales. So a little bit lower depending on what the baseline is for quarterly gem sales.

In the second line, it reads:
“GW2 sales surged, driven by the launch of the expansion pack”

And the tables are named sales breakdown, so i was thinking about copies sold.

So what are the numbers in the first link actually showing?

Torolan.5816:

In the second line, it reads:
“GW2 sales surged, driven by the launch of the expansion pack”

And the tables are named sales breakdown, so i was thinking about copies sold.

So what are the numbers in the first link actually showing?

Sales in Korean Won per million.

A Korean Won according to a quick search is exchanged for 0,000831 US Dollars. That would be 31,02 M.

How is Lineage still doing so well?

morrolan.9608:

Khyan.7039:

crussell.8504:

Question is, why do people care so much about how much profit NCSoft makes or doesn’t make? Let’s face it. With the current state of the game and the engine it’s built on, I reckon within the next 2 years tops GW2 will be about as popular as Kim Jong Eun’s hair style. Which is pretty fab if I do say so myself.

Because it’s players that care about Guild Wars 2 future.

I’m personally glad Guild Wars 2 is doing well.

But its not doing well based on those figures. They couldn’t sustain ongoing development on the base gem sales and the HOT sales are clearly disappointing and not enough to sustain the game until the next xpac.

Based on what exactly? This is an extraordinary opinion to come to based on this data.

HoT just does not cater for the traditionally casual GW player It’s a niche product. What did they expect????

So, Blade and Soul made about as much as GW2 even tho BnS is free to play and GW2 just released a 60$ expansion?
Gj I guess NCsoft

bladex.9502:

So, Blade and Soul made about as much as GW2 even tho BnS is free to play and GW2 just released a 60$ expansion?
Gj I guess NCsoft

B&S Just launched in a new market and his been out for a while in the East. At the very least TRY to be a bit more objective.

I hope this is a wake-up call for ArenaNet. The amount of content in HoT was not enough, the price tag was too steep and the marketing campaign was bleh.

Good news is they seem to have come to the same conclusions, considering they now talk all the time about being focused on making a lot more content and making the game less grind-y. But we’ll see.

Edit: something worth noting is that I don’t really see the China release having much of an impact on earnings. All those resources and energy and for what?

Andulias.9516:

Good news is they seem to have come to the same conclusions, considering they now talk all the time about being focused on making a lot more content and making the game less grind-y. But we’ll see.

The grind exists because they need filler because they are unable to create enough real content in the time that they have.

So making the game less grindy and creating more content? Not going to happen.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Andulias.9516:

Good news is they seem to have come to the same conclusions, considering they now talk all the time about being focused on making a lot more content and making the game less grind-y. But we’ll see.

The grind exists because they need filler because they are unable to create enough real content in the time that they have.

So making the game less grindy and creating more content? Not going to happen.

What you just said doesn’t make sense. if they focus on making more content they wouldn’t need to create grind as a filler? Provided that that’s the reasoning behind it, which I seriously doubt.

morrolan.9608:

Ayrilana.1396:

I just read the earnings report and nothing in there stated that it performed poorly. I know that some people are disappointed with the expansion but there’s no need to twist the earnings report towards a direction that itself doesn’t even support.

NCSoft state it in the earnings call.

Actually no, I just listened to the conference call. They never said it performed poorly. They said exactly what was in the slides. GW2 sales surged due to the expansion pack. It’s a main revenue driver. And improved sales in China is reflected in the royalties for the quarter being higher than the previous. They also mentioned that there were some increase marketing costs due to all the game cons that ANet attended last year but that’s normal when you are launching a new game or expansion.

Now at the 34 minute mark there was a question from a JP Morgan analyst which asked since the sales of HoT seems to be weaker than expected, his words, what are the plans to boost GW2 income, does something need to be done to the cash shop. NCSOFT’s reply was in their eyes the issue centers on conversion of P4F players to B2P and that rate is below expectations. Also the income from the Gem Shop relative to active players is fine where it is so nothing needs to change there. So to improve converting non-HoT owners to HoT owners, they are looking at ways to tease them with systems only available in HoT. (Core Tyria gliding anyone?) Another method they are looking into is more frequent content updates that only expansion owners can access.

That’s all that was said. Here’s the URL (copy/paste it) if you want to download the conference call, it’s an hour and is in both Korean and English. Click on the arrow to download, it’s a zip file containing a wma audio file.

www.calltogether.co.kr:8080/down/down_ncsoft.jsp

NCSOFT doesn’t publish profit numbers on individual games or subsidiaries so talking about if the game is or isn’t profitable is kind of pointless because we don’t know.

So neutering content of core tyria was not sufficient to bring in more HoT buyers instead of P4F players who wanted to take a peak preview of GW2 and the new idea is candy instead of the whip?
Shocker.^^

An analyst asking a question and receiving an honest sounding answer like this suggest to me that HoT did not perform as well as NcSoft has thought it would because if it had, they would have showered him with diagrams and charts stating that this was not the case and everything did go as planned.
Although it is a little bit hair splicing, a poor performance is not synomymus to a exception not fullfilled fully. Of course this does not reflect well on the product in most cases and it damages the band and future investments. How severe that damage is probably depends on how much it failed to meet the expections.

But who came up with those guesses of expansion revenue, analysts not associated with NCSOFT. And they feed on each other. Remember ANet announced around 2 million P4F accounts. The question becomes what is a good conversion rate? Every 10% translates into 10 billion KrW.

And since P4F is essentially an unlimited, nearly nonrestrictive trial that people have played for 3 years, was 2 months enough time for these players to say “sure let me drop some money” or “I got months of play for free still before I think about the expansion”.

what is even more interesting is q1 2016 report, because some of the people who bought hot was not happy with it, things like xp grind, overall difficulty and raiding and top of all short story ( so some of them stop buying gem card and i am one of them) not just gw2 expansion did not sell as well as anet/ncsoft hoping for but even after there were angry people over the change of direction of the game so q1 2016 will be very interesting to see.

WILDSTAR is still in dire condition..boost in sales from f2p conversion is not really good and if it falls again considering numbers are already low it might not survive to see 2017.

in korea, only 2 strong standing game company is NCsoft and Nexon…

and it seems like NCsoft has more international market than others with most of their titles are from their own in-house developer teams

I think it’s quite disappointing to be honest. I don’t necessary mean for GW2.

I see Wow and Eve numbers plummet. Wow probably have 100 million account made(and that is a lowbar. How much over 100 million no one knows), and in the end 5 million stayed, etc.

It’s sad but true, mmorpg retention rate isn’t high. People should expect that. I’ve been playing GW2 for a few years, and now I only log in to collect laurels. People move on.

And lastly, I dont’ think people need to worry about GW2, seemed they can do just fine with the cash shop. They already are.

Not surprised with Eve numbers dropping to be honest, laokoko. There are only so many clueless newbies that want to be farmed by griefers over and over.^^

Of course Gw2 has made a surge in sales on the 4rth when HoT launched. The important factor will be set in 2016. Starting on the 1rst quarterly. I’m willing to bet that the numbers are as impressive as Wildstar. Or close to that.

A more detailed abstract of the conference call in regard to GW2:

“To talk about the Guild Wars 2 performance, it is weaker than what we have expected." According to Ncsoft the reason lies in the conversion from play for free to the paid expansion. This conversion rate is not as high as expected/hoped by NCsoft. The amount of gem sales and item sales versus active players is ok. “ but it is more the issue of the conversion to the paid expansion pack that we have not seen the level (of sales) we have hoped”

To address the issue there are two strategies, that Ncsoft is currently trying to look at:

First strategy is to induce more conversions. They try to tdentify what is hindering the people from converting over. They try to address this with events or maybe ingame systems.

The second strategy is a look at the expansion. What was there at launch and what were the expectations of the users? They identified a gap there. They will review the content updates and their frequency.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/455vxo/ncsofts_earning_report_4q_2015_disillusioning/

Strange enough, in 2016 there are still managers who think that hiding content that was freely available when you had bought GW2 core and established your guild is a legit business scheme.

What I find even more funny is that a series of minigames and four three layer maps where you can only agree with great pains that for example the uppermost layer of the first map is really a layer or just some floating island is counted upon as asking for 60 dollars. Some morons like me still bought it despite knowing what they would be underwhelmed by the size of the expansion, but there are obviously many people who are more clever or more stingy than me.
The sad part of tihs is that HoT gets kind of good when you manage to reel in most of the masteries. Up until then, it is a pain.^^

And no, neutering and no longer supporting dungeons will not let the people you had stay, it will make people leave if they were dungeon runners.

is a legit business becoz is a trial account but this trial account is given free for life play time

but they greatly overestimated the worth of the game in the eyes of the players who come through via f2p. f2p has many other titles gw2 has to compare to.

SkyShroud.2865:

is a legit business becoz is a trial account but this trial account is given free for life play time

but they greatly overestimated the worth of the game in the eyes of the players who come through via f2p. f2p has many other titles gw2 has to compare to.

Or they gave too much away for free and many F2P players were not interesting in spending any money in the first place. That is just one of many reasons why F2P players may not have purchased the expansion.

28% drop in profits does not equal a 28% net loss. That would imply that the company was in the Red. The Company was well into the black (by over 100 million dollars) just less in the black than the year before. Which they explained as essentially “start up” and “launch” costs that wont be ongoing next year.