Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
The first crack in the cash shop dream? NCSoft seeing Aion cash shop sales 'sharply' decreasing
Vesavius
Member RarePosts: 7,908
http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/08/08/ncsoft-weathers-6m-loss-in-q2/
NCSoft sees Aion suffer a drastic decrease in cash shop sales.
Considering how jaundiced the information we are fed about cash shop revenue models by the industry (I won't go into my theory of why we are fed such a one sided story, that's for another thread), we are forced to seize on small pieces of information as indicators. This is the first such indicator, one that says that maybe the cash shop model is not as fail safe as the majority once thought, despite being sold to us as the 'inevitable' and 'unstoppable' future.
Now, we cannot know anything for sure because the industry is so full of BS and spin but It seems, in the mid to long term, that cash shop is maybe not the magic bullet for 'failed' games many have evangalised.
Maybe an industry more intent on selling us a revenue model then designing great games needs to have a think on their priorities.
Game first.
Thoughts on this early morning thought bubble?
Comments
Good.
Like you said, game first. The sooner companies realize players want to play a game and not some piece of crap product designed to milk cash cows, the better. Chances are though it'll take a lot more to happen, but I think it's already started.
Now, let us see how this ends.
You know what's fun about chaos? I do, but I won't tell.
Might not be Aion's CS, but more the game itself. From what I understand, NC's other game (Lineage II) is doing fine with it's CS. Then again, a lot of RMT/botting players are using the CS to make L2 a Pay2Win game, using their profit from the illegal RMT/botting on their main char to get ++++ gear...
Also, from what I heard, LotRo is doing fine with it's Freemium system as well. Though there are no numbers available about it's profit (or lack of it), since it went F2P, we've had 2 expansions already and the player base is still going strong. I'm pretty sure WB would not allow LotRo to loose (too) much money anyway...
Well I quit AIon over a year ago I went back tried Aion, and Quit again I am sick of NcSoft.
1. NcSoft always over charges for everything instead of offering a flat rate subscription they become like PWI, and they charge you like $9.99 USD to change a hair color or costume one one Character, or things like skins which You already paid for to use when you purchased your game.
2. If your Lineage 2 account gets hacked, or Aion account, do not expect NCSoft to do anything, my account was compromised not due to any reasons, but because they didn't even have a secondary security code, and they did nothing to return my gear. Know that if your account is ripped off you will not get your items back when they should be given back, and the people who took them should be banned. Know by playing their game they will not help you compared to "Blizzard" or other mmo companies that actually do something about it. really I don't think my L2 account was hacked either, I think it was NCsoft themselves, but that is a conspiracy and they wouldn't provide me IP Logs when I asked.
2. Enmasse did this as well after less than one month into playing their game along with an EULA which I never accepted and was misinformed by them. Beyond the EULA issues and or TOS issues I had with Enmasse they started the Charging of $9.99 to change a characters looks so I dropped my subscription one month after.
Both these companies are failures in my eyes for over pricing everything, and I hope they loose more money simply said. If you want to play a MMORPG check out games like. Eve Online, or DarkFall, or any other MMO which has a flat rate subscription and doesn't charge too much money.
I tried TSW and quit the game after the first month not even a week of playing, for one, The game loads too dang slow even on a good computer over 10 seconds waiting for it to load is too long for me, and second lack of customization, and wanting to charge me for a bunch of costumes I can only use on one character, they will probabily even charge for customization changes to my hair, skin color, etc. This isn't the type of game I want to play so I havent even bothered to sub back to that.
Games like Fallen Earth & APB Reloaded.
1. Fallen Earth has too many hackers with Aimbot, and over priced so that you have to pay to respec not free respecs like it should be as a $30 a month subscribe to their game.
2. APB Reloaded too many Aimbots.
And on both these games too many Trolls, and Griefing clans at some points.
In other words, I would avoid game companies like.
1. NC Soft, Except maybe GW2 depending on how it looks, Aion and Lineage 2 are not worth playing.
2. Funcom, because TSW was a failure, overall better than Fallen Earth, but not worth my money in the state its in.
3. Gamers First, becuase their Admin's don't do anything about the Trolls, and hackers in APB, or Fallen Earth, and if they do its not fast enough, personally I had a very bad customer experience with the Admins who run Fallen Earth, and a hacking clan on this game obviously using aimbot/multihack.
4. Enmasse explains itself Tera could have been a great MMORPG, but they blew it too many mistakes at launch.
5. PWI, or perfect world, feels like a SCAM, you spend money and don't get much on any of their games, then you have the lame conversion system etc.
In the famous words (well in the UK anyway) of Reeves and Mortimer, so altogether now in a geordie accent.....You Won't Let It Lie.
So now what about all those other very successful F2P games and companies like Nexon (now a major stake holder in Ncsoft), Perfect World (bought Cryptic recently for a large sum of money), Turbine, Alaplaya (just secured the rights to host all SOE games in the EU), Gamigo, Joymax, Bigpoint, Atlus, Gpotato, Gameforge and many more successful companies that have made their fortunes on cashshops?
Vesavius you are letting you own feelings about cashshops cloud your judgment and its not the future its the here and now get used to it.
This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.
I make no judgements on the model in this thread. I simply offer up possibilities and ask questions.
As for what you posted... look at the title of the tread again... I ask is this the FIRST visible crack, not 'what companies have grown rich off the model'.
As for accepting 'how it is' and 'letting it lie'... well, no. With the utter lack of critical industry discussion of the model and it's mid to long term future and effect on the genre I like to talk openly about it.
You just need to stop railing against my doing so now and get used to it.
The problem was layoffs, raised there labour costs 27%. Takings we're down 12% on this quater last year, not too bad at all. Of course Aion was p2p then but obviously bleeding or they would not have changed the model. It's only been f2p for 6 months after all.
Tl;dr I dunno how you one can possibly conclude what you did from the information they released.
You cannot kid a kidder Vesavius I've been around these boards long enough to know your motives here, this is an agenda thread not a critcal discussion as all the evidence if you want to see it is there, the success of cashshop games are blowing away that of sub based games but you decide to pick on a game that failed as sub based in the west and now might be going the same route as a freemium game but convienently ignore the fact that Nexon are one of the rising stars of the MMO world and now own a big stake in Ncsoft and that all the other companies I mention are expanding their rosters with the next batch of F2P games starting to rival the production values of sub games, Age Of Wulin/Wushu, Swordsmen, Planetside 2 while sub based games are struggling to survive.
Also how about the reverse STO bombed as a p2p and now that its a cashshop game look at all that advertising PWE are doing on this site, now where'd that money come from?
This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.
I stopped reading and cut you off here because you seem just intent on making this about me rather then the topic and I honestly cba with that.
If you made an actual point later on I apologise.
I don't really think it's odd... Aion has one of those cash shops with mostly useless items as far as gameplay goes.
Companies are trying to mutate the CS model by offering cosmetic items and all this junk when the companies that really profit from the FTP model offer items with substance.
Will be interesting to see how GW2 fairs with a similar CS.
I very much agree.
Can purely cosmetic really justify a game in the eyes of the accountants in the mid to long term?
GW2's shop is already heavier then I thought it would be, based on GW1's anyhow.... I am watching it closely, must admit.
(E) Not enough information.
Have players stopped using the cash shop or is activity in Aion down across the board?
How has Aion's development team been with introducing new content in the last year?
Have players migrated to another game or games, or are they anticipating doing so?
If so, do these games have cash shops and are the players still spending the same amounts?
Did NCSoft do something that angered players and put them off Aion and/or the cash shop?
How are other cash shop games doing among players from the areas that Aion draws its players?
How are subscription-based games doing among players from the areas that Aion draws its players?
What percentage of players actually reduced their cash shop spending? Was it a few big spenders or a bunch of little ones or an even mix?
And so on. I'm sure there are plenty of other pertinent questions.
At some poine WoW's audience will dip below a couple million players and get shut down .... is that going to be the indicator of the ultimate failure of the subscription model or will it be a consequence of a multitude of other factors like the game being old with no new content in development and players moving on to other games?
Who is your "majority" who call cash shops a "fail safe" "magic bullet"? I have never heard that before. This seems to be a straw man argument. You also seem to be arguing by corollary that Aion would be doing better with a subscription. What evidence do you have of that? Your post is also full of "poisoning the well" logical fallacies.
The game might be doing poorly because it is an unpopular game, regardless of the payment method. To extrapolate that this is an indication that F2P models don't work is a bit of a stretch. I could make a similar argument about the relative failures of recent P2P games like SWTOR and conclude that P2P is obviously a failed payment model.
I very much agree.
Can purely cosmetic really justify a game in the eyes of the accountants in the mid to long term?
GW2's shop is already heavier then I thought it would be, based on GW1's anyhow.... I am watching it closely, must admit.
I think GW2 can succeed because it is buy to play. Aion was I guess though .. but anet has my confidence that they can actually market and sell boxes and expansions as a primary source of revenue, augmented by a non-substantial CS. I hate cash shops as much as the next guy .. probably even more. And I may be silly for hoping, but I hope/think anet if anyone, can pull it off. Whether they will or not is another question.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-08-08-ncsoft-makes-q2-loss-amid-spiralling-costs
is probably a more balanced / informed article about this.
Basically, Aion's revenue was reduced from 54M Won (about 50k USD) to 36.3M won (about 30K USD).
I guess you can go down the alarmists (sky is falling route) of 'omg! almost 50% drop in revenue!'.
I'll probably go... 50k to 30k? What crack?
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
I don’t think this is a much an impact factor on the cash shop side as it is that way NCSoft handeld the Aion shift to F2P.
Selling EU to Gameforge was a really bad thing, they have made a mess of it though lack of experience and because of this constant delays.
EU is only just able to give players the veteran rewards because Gameforge didn’t have a clue what they was doing, its taken until now to see them getting any kind of handle on the way to run a game like Aion.
Also since NCsoft passed off the EU players to another company i doubt they get much of the profits from EU sales so NCsoft was always going to be at a loss for passing on half their player base. Anyone expecting they to have made anything but a loss from a move like this is silly.
Other companies seen bigger profits from going F2P with their games because they simply didn’t split their player bases in half and have 2 completely different ran system (US and EU Aion are completely different cash shops). So i blame this loss on NCsoft's bad choice of splitting in 2 than how this can reflect badly on cash shops / F2P conversion.
not that i would disagree about the fact that the f2p payment model can be successful, but we have to differ between companies and games. for example gameforge and bigpoint made their money mainly with browser games. nexon and perfect world did grow strong through low budget mmogs on the asia market and then expanded to NA and EU. perfect world did bought cryptic for nearly nothing from a stuggeling company called atari. its easy to refund low investments, even with the f2p payment model. alaplaya, founded by burda media, a german media company, only published low budget asia mmogs. alaplaya then was sold to the prosiebensat1 AG, another german media company, the biggest in europe, the same prosiebensat1 AG which is in bed with SOE and bigpoint. gamigo, gpotato, gameforge, more browser games and client based low budget mmog. cheap to develop, cheap to maintain. thats one formula to make money with f2p.
the second formula to make money with f2p is the way turbine did with DDO. turn a 3 year old high budget p2p mmog (30+ development cost) into a f2p / freemium one. and many other high budget mmog followed this example, but there was no real risk. all these mmogs had their refund through boxsells and years of constant monthly payment from a small but loyal playerbase. yes, DDO had an increase of 400% in their revenues within the first months after going f2p, all of them had an increase also in playernumbers actually playing this game. and yes they all now have more people subscribed to their games then before, because more and more people went playing mmogs in the last decade. and to make it easy for those new customers the companies offer not a 14 days trial time, they offer a unlimited trial time without the necessity to buy the game, if you want some extras, just subscribe or spend some money in the cashshop.
but .... in my opinion in NA and EU the playerbase will not grow as fast as it did the last decade (maybe 5% a year) and all these low budget f2p mmogs have to compete with the high budget freemium mmogs and as we see more and more low budget mmogs (f.e. eligium, mythos etc) vanishing, the upcoming high budget mmogs like wildstar, neverwinter, teso etc have to compete with the old ones. and it will be a risk for games like neverwinter or otherland with their 30+ million development cost to go freemium right from the start but they have to cause of the competition.
that aions cashshop sells are dropping is based on this competition. compare the f2p system from aion with the system from lotro, age of conan or star trek online. yes, aions delivers a really hard one and tough to swallow. and with the fall of sw:tor and the lessons we can learn from it, its now not only the competition which mmog offers the best f2p payment system also which mmog offers the best quality and most fun.
I would expect Aion CS sales to drop off. Anyone moving over to GW2 isn't going to bother with Microtransactions for a game they are leaving soon. I'm actually surprised NCSoft got as much revenue from Aion since it launched as they have. There were some nice elements to the game, but the overall design is a fail for mass market success.
As far as NCSoft, I had my Aion account hacked once and got everything back within 36 hours. I also had a good experience with NCSoft retrieving a very old secondary GW1 account. I have no complaints about Customer Service on any NCSoft games I've played.
Solid cash shop revenue requires two things, a cash shop model that can actually produce revenue from the player base and a large, active player base. I never played Aion after it went F2P, so I can't comment on the specifics of there shop, but it's clear they have been losing active customers, which of course will reduce revenue.
GW2 is "the real deal" as an MMORPG. I really think it will be the first AAA MMO since WoW launched to see it's active player base increase over time, rather than peak quickly, before entering a quick slide. It would have had that potential even as a subscription based MMO, but being B2P just gives the game an even bigger advantage in retaining and attracting customers after the game launches.
I've playtested GW2 for about 129 hours. I think that's long enough to have an informed opinion about how well the game succeeds as an MMO and how likely it is to keep people interested once they start playing it for real. Heck, most MMOs I've purchased in the last few years haven't maintained my interest for more than 40-60 hours, with the experience wearing thin much earlier than that. I honestly can't get enough of GW2 and, IMO, if GW2 can't power an expanding player base, with low churn and solid monthly box sales, I don't know what MMO ever will.
The cash shop model is a roll of the dice, but I can't imagine a better game to pair the business model with in order to maximize the chances for success.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
