Why the game was shut down

[bittercupojoe]

A few people were asking "Why?" and someone on SomethingAwful posted the sales numbers, pulled from NCSoft's financial filings from the last few years:

• 1Q 08: 5416
• 2Q 08: 5743
• 3Q 08: 6193
• 4Q 08: 6865
• 1Q 09: 6837

Comments

[linenoise]

That *kinda* explains it, but not really. I understand bad financials, but other games have lasted a long time in maintenence mode. Why the thermonuclear devastation with absolutely no warning?

[bigangry]

Aion, for one example, is fucking HUGE in Asia, where NCsoft does most of its business. It makes sense that they'd can COH, which flopped in Asia, before Aion.

[bittercupojoe]

NCSoft, in general, has not been doing well for a while now, particularly in the North American market. I think after several of their MMOs flamed out, they're being a bit more gunshy now, and decided that a year of F2P not saving the game was enough; better to get out while it's barely profitable instead of waiting for it to become unprofitable, which would almost certainly happen in the next year.

[cstuck]

Yeah. It's the absoluteness and the suddenness that makes me think this wasn't entirely about money. There was no pruning, no cut-backs, no slowdown, no "steps." They just...jumped.

[derekl1963]

"So there you go. There's your why."

Not really - that's like showing a graphs of a patients temperature that died of the flu and claiming that overheating was the cause of death.

There's a lot of screwups and incompetence behind those numbers the same way there's a lot of other stuff behind that fever.

[bittercupojoe]

Really? Name some