11/FEB/13
New Releases: What upcoming games are you looking forward to?
NCSoft admits defeat in the Superhero Market!
04/SEP/12 | Back to LordXenite's Profile
Total Views:
57
Comments:
7
LordXenite said...
NCSoft is closing Paragon Studios and terminating City of Heroes / Villains.
It seems that this has come as a shock not only to the games' community but also to the developers themselves. If you do some Google searching, you will eventually find articles talking about Nexon and NCSoft performing a merger and offering to acquire an as-yet unknown company, possibly EA or Activision. — http://www.kdbdw.com/bbs/download/161672.pdf?attachmentId=161672
It's entirely possible this is a direct result of PWE acquiring Cryptic and Cryptic having transitioned two titles to the F2P model with a third title using them same game engine (which arguably should cut down their development cycle and funds) coming 2013.
Personally, I think NCSoft (and Nexon) figured out they simply cannot compete in the Superhero arena, while Cryptic is now marching into the High Fantasy with Never Winter Online.
August 31st is a sad day for Superhero fans, MMO fans and Paragon Studios, and come December CoH/V will be no more.
Hopefully, PWE/Cryptic will hire the talent forcibly ejected into the job market before Paragon Studios closes their gates!
It seems that this has come as a shock not only to the games' community but also to the developers themselves. If you do some Google searching, you will eventually find articles talking about Nexon and NCSoft performing a merger and offering to acquire an as-yet unknown company, possibly EA or Activision. — http://www.kdbdw.com/bbs/download/161672.pdf?attachmentId=161672
It's entirely possible this is a direct result of PWE acquiring Cryptic and Cryptic having transitioned two titles to the F2P model with a third title using them same game engine (which arguably should cut down their development cycle and funds) coming 2013.
Personally, I think NCSoft (and Nexon) figured out they simply cannot compete in the Superhero arena, while Cryptic is now marching into the High Fantasy with Never Winter Online.
August 31st is a sad day for Superhero fans, MMO fans and Paragon Studios, and come December CoH/V will be no more.
Hopefully, PWE/Cryptic will hire the talent forcibly ejected into the job market before Paragon Studios closes their gates!
Member actions:
Share this by easily informing your online social networks.
Share this with your friends on Facebook.
Share this with your friends on Twitter.
Share this with your friends on Friendfeed.
Share this with your friends on Tumblr.
Submit this URL to Digg.
Submit this URL to Stumbleupon.
Related Content
Growing up with Star Trek (TOS) I've always wondered what it would be like to explore space, to...
Hopefully I'll have enough patience to stick with Borderlands enough to build these two characters...
What's really going on is that NCSoft is phasing out the American portion of their business and changing their focus back to Korea. Expect a few other of their American titles to also be closed down in the near future.
The reasoning is simple. Their #1 game is made on the cheap, never has any significant updates, barely even has any game mechanics or content, and yet has millions of more players than City of Heroes. Their American titles all spend more money in development (several times more) and the American workers cost a lot more money than Korean workers. They just don't think all that extra expense is paying off.
Enter ArenaNet with their Guild Wars 2, and it looks like NCSoft simply decided that Paragon Studios and City of Heroes are deadweight and not worthy of investing in anymore.
However... ArenaNet themselves are located in Bellevue, Washington, and are a wholly-owned subsidiary of Korea-based NCsoft Corporation — this is from ArenaNet's own website.
So, clearly NCSoft IS interested in the US market, now perhaps more than ever since there are talks of Nexon and NCSoft offering to acquire a US development studio!