One-shot wonder social gaming publisher GungHo Online’s days of outstripping Nintendo in market cap look to be well and truly over – the company’s value has plunged by over a third in mere days, leaving nobody in any doubt as to the permanence of social gaming’s ascendancy.
Even so, the company probably still has a very long way to fall, as it attained almost all of its value in the last few months of its 15 year history:
Japan’s stock markets appear to have been overheated by unrealistic (or premature) expectations of Abenomics and this resulted in a record drop for the entire market, but the collapse of GungHo’s share price began well before this, and tellingly Nintendo was left almost untouched:
Meanwhile, Sony has become a market darling on the news that it has already won the console war for the next generation and likely has years of gleefully crushing Xboxes underfoot ahead of it:
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yay
Still, never heard of them. I'm sure not many people will notice if they go under.
They made Hero of Leviathan, a...boring, ridiculous, low budget nds game. I wont miss them much.
Ragnarok Odyssey is pretty good, though.
Gung Ho doesn't only work in the mobile/online market, even though they're mostly known for Ragnarok Online and Puzzle & Dragon, they're also doing a lot in the console and handheld market. Including, but not only, this:
http://www.siliconera.com/2013/01/29/grasshopper-manufacture-acquired-by-gungho-online-entertainment/
They also aquired Game Arts before that. They're also the ones that bring previously Japanese-only PS1 games to the Playstation Network.
I didn't really care for them until they decided to aquire two great legitimate game developers, honestly. I just thought I'd inform people a bit more about them...
I think this is relevant...
http://www.siliconera.com/2013/05/23/puzzle-dragons-rebuild-of-evangelion-collaboration-adds-kaworu-nagisa/
“The Social Bubble Finally Bursts!?”
Oh man I sure hope so.
Anyone who knows anything about stocks knows that eventually a stock based on air will rise and fall like nobody's business, I just didn't expect it to crash so spectacularly in a few days.
I am actually happy.
Like the Apple bubble that's leaking air right now...
Apple isn't doing horribly. That was much like facebook, where there was really nothing there but what you saw. Apple does deal in physical products (that happen to deal in air :P) so they actually do have merit in what they do, even though I dislike their products and their practices myself.
Apple actually does design their own chips for the iOS line.
This is why they perform so well the OS and hardware are very tightly coupled.
I'm not an apple fan boy but just about every other tablet generally feels somewhat clunky compared to the ipad.
That sucks, wonder if SquareEnix is still planning on focusing their sources on the "social gaming" experience and produce more games on the over crowded android and ipod market.
Overcrowded is the problem. Unfortunately they're trying to hop a trend as the trend is dying. They either must reinvent their social gaming to usher in a new form, or they're going to go with substandard rapid creations like that crap that was posted here the other day and fail even further. For now they can blame Wada, but it really wasn't him who screwed everything up.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091159/
That was a bad movie
I haven't even seen it, I'm surprised someone here actually has, lol.
Another case of pump-and-dump from speculators looking to make a quick buck. The only losers here are the ones that bought into the hype and went long on a one trick pony tech stock.
History repeats itself.
like square enix. Social games are shit. I'm unfriending anyone of facebook where i see that they play this crap
I don't know why people cheer so much for the end of social bubble... is it so that people who wants to play social games have nothing left for them, and so that big studios keep producing the same ol' repetitive crap we're all tired of?
Nah, I think it would be way more beneficial for gamers that small studios (not only social, but indie too) keep growing to force big studios to break the mould and create something different for a change...
Social games issue
- microtransaction
- quantity over quality
- lacks physical button
- games lacks lasting appeal
For innovation, indie games do exist in PC and console platform. Also, the some of the big guy do innovate and publish new IP.
Capcom with Dragon Dogma and Square Enix with Bravely Default as example.
I think people are cheering cause this shows, social games are not the future of gaming, and this stock plunges news should be a lesson on Square Enix to rethink their plan, and stick back into its used to be very successful roots.
Which is making RPG that everyone will remember even after 10 years later.
fuck that, dragons dogma, while a good game, rode the coattails of demon souls, in a genera that was long dormant... the realistic\ish hard fantacy game.
bravely is a "holy shit, we cant call a game final fantasy anymore" rpg that is basicly final fantasy without the name.
i want social games to fail hard because the shit they do is leaking into real games. i want them to fail hard to discourage that shit from ever happening in the future
everyone who made square successful in the past has long jumped ship. they should hand final fantasy over to a western team, at least that way we may get something good out of them, but no, im betting they will sink themselves before they hand off a game to a western developer with no strings attached.
Have you seen what's been happening with the "classic" game developers from our childhoods? They're being lured by profits to move resources from "real games" to "social cash cows" and mobile games.
On top of that, where as the choices for "casual" gamers were less before the social gaming boom, now they're being lured into playing these soulless, profit-focused games rather than what casual gamers used to play, such as puzzlers like tetris and breakout or platformers like mario which many of us started on at our youngest and encouraged us to venture into more hardcore titles. With crap like Angry Birds and CoD being the majority of what's played by the mainstream these days, and games like that being the most successful and even praised by society, what the hell does the future of gaming look like?
And if that didn't explain enough, maybe this will:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeLTx-ZhlFQ
Players with a conscience want to support games created by artists or fellow gamers, not businessmen and corporations. They also don't want to see the people in their lives being lured into the social gaming trap when they could be making better use of that time playing games that deserve that attention. Until now, I've never heard of any social gaming publisher evolving to anything beyond what it's always been, they've done nothing special yet. Gung Ho has the most potential so far to becoming a respectable company out of it's past, but look at the likes of Zynga...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeLTx-ZhlFQ
lol I've never heard of Candy Crush. So, this is basically nothing more than another variation of Tetris and other puzzlers.
I played Tetris as a little child and some years ago I enjoyed Lumines on PSP (which was kind of addictive). Good thing... you payed once and had unlimited fun. Candy Crush requires you to pay for more levels? Bullshit. You need your "friends help"? Yeah, to quit that shit and find a good therapist!
Retarded apps and DLC riddled games. Give me ONE full product, worth my money. This reminds me of "The Sims". I lost count of the many addons there are :(
Yeah, that's a classic example of how to take a good game idea like Tetris or other puzzlers that already exist and turn them into business-focused social games... I don't see how anyone can argue in their favor, it's a soulless industry.
Love all the praise for Sony when all they've really announced is they have a console in the works. Microsoft gave more info. I'll laugh so hard when Sony pulls worse stuff than the MS rumors (not fact) state. We know they will, too... its Sony.
It's not what either console has at launch, it's the features they add/remove ~after~ launch I'm more worried about.
Metro... Facebook... apps... restricted pay-to-use services... annoying ads en mass...
Wait, that's what became of my 360 -__-
...Not sure what world you live in. MS confirmed in Q&A that used games are a no-go without some kind of fee and that you need to connect to their servers daily to maintain functionality.
Though if you get excited over tv, sports, and Call of Duty, I guess Xbox's reveal must have been amazing to you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbWgUO-Rqcw
If it not for the so many repetitive game that had almost the same style gameplay out there, I would still cheer for social gaming.
Not many company had innovation in their mind, they are more like money sucker.
please upvote this comment
FINALLY! JAPAN WILL DIE!
Actually the death of social gaming probably will benefit Japan as a whole just like the death of Facebook would be generally be beneficial to the US.
SO JAPAN, WHEN WILL YOU BE ERASED NOW?
Go away Yumekichi11! How I know it's you? The internet is a conspiracy network from Japan... to find YOU. Stop your hatred and get a life! And stop posting pics of beheaded pigs on your blog, that's disgusting!
i would have shorted that shit a life time ago
Right now the Square Enix CEO is saying, "FUCK!"
They deserve their downfall.
hah, he is most likely saying "that will never happen to us! we have Final Fantasy!"
Hmm... this doesn't surprise me at all, that's how the stock market works. It reaches a climax, then declines some... then it drops more and more.
Sony's value might continue rising for now, but soon it'll fall again. IIRC the PS4 presentation is in June, depending on what shit they'll offer, their stocks could plummet or rise drastically. Not surprising, just analysis -_-
Well... it works the same with stockings. Just when they sit high and you enjoy them, the woman will start dropping them. She undresses and the stockings are gone!
Except that when stockings are gone from the woman, everyone wins. Not so much when stock prices falls.
Anyone thinking that social gaming was anything but a quick bubble was completely out of their mind. If was able to survive the long haul then video game companies who have long gone out of business would have made it. There was a long established pattern of this sort of video game market bubbles, all you had to do is look at the market as a whole.
The who won the eighth generation is also unrealistically premature bullshit. At bare minimum we need to see E3.
You gotta admit it's not looking too great for Microsoft, though.
It's because Steve Ballmer is an idiot.
you know... Sony clung to the social bubble too
Insider trading!!
Say... Does Artefact studies economy? There isn't a lot of sites keeping such attention in stock prices of game/anime companies around.
It would be an awesome niche for Sankaku to corner.
Called it.
Social gaming won't last forever because there's no long-term thinking behind it all.
Look at Zynga and how miserable they are after Farmville's rise and fall, and also how they spent $300 million for OMGPOP and Draw Something before they drove that into the ground.
That and it was only eventual that people would get bored of Puzzles & Dragons.
[Pyon!]
Or the Korean execs decided to dump their shares.