NCsoft's Gaffney: Subscriptions more profitable than microtransactions

@Puremallace

NCsoft korea =/= NCsoft in the US.

most every NCsoft game over on their home turf is f2p (including AION), so yeah, this statement is highly hypocritical.

but these are the same jack-asses who canceled & closed Tabula Rasa, Auto Assault, Dungeon Runners, and Exteel. four titles that would have been perfect for a f2p conversion. Wisdom must be a four letter word to whoever is in charge of things over at NCsoft.

@Fakeassname
Yeaj EXCEPT for the little fact their 3 most profitable gametitle Lineage, Lineage 2 and ALSO Aion are all P2P games NOT F2P.

@Omali

Guild Wars hasn't had a major update since mid 2007. How much of their profit should come from it? If Guild Wars 2 features the same model as the original, you can still bet that stat will change immediately on release.

@Omali

I'm not sure about Linage II, but AION is f2p in Korea.

@tmarg

My point was of course someone from NCsoft would praise subscriptions over cash shop games, because their subscription games (foremost the Lineage games) have historically brought in more money, and their single attempt at a free to play cash shop game (Exteel) shut down because of low population.

@Omali

eXteel actually wasn't shut down due to low population, it was shut down to low profitability. I loved the hell out of that game, but there just wasn't enough variability to the game play to warrant spending money on it.

if they had fixed the latency issues and added in a few more PvE or more objective based missions like the tutorial ones, I'd have kitted myself out with a couple of high end mechs.

but even with it's low profitability, the game had like zero overhead costs (I think the matches were even instanced on the room leader's client instead of a NCsoft server) and could have just been relegated to auto-pilot mode with no support, NCsoft's closure of it always seemed like a "wahhh wahhh" maneuver in an attempt to exemplify how f2p just doesn't "work."

@Sonoran

That really isn't true. There are comparatively few straight sub games compared to some variant of F2P RMT games. Especially since he specifically said worldwide.

@tmarg

Well there's a lot of grey area in definitions of what's "subscription" and what's "micro transaction". So much so that the whole comparison thing probably isn't worthwhile.

But what he didn't say was that Subscription is more "profitable" than Microtrans.

@gildhur

He is trying to cover his ass after Nexon just announced a massive profit margin for the second year in a row. It seems like the top guys for NCsoft NA made some definitive statements to their bosses over in Korea about how f2p will never work over here, but Nexon keeps kicking their asses while more and more western titles go f2p and the only NCsoft game that is considered a mainstream success is Guild Wars.

This guy is probably trying to run damage control 'cause the bosses over in Korea are probably madder than all hell right about now. NCsoft was one of the major f2p pioneers in Korea, they could have been driving the international f2p bandwagon instead of getting left to eat dirt.