Developer publishes major losses in Q2.
NCSoft posted their Q2 finance report this week and the results are less than delicious. Marking a 30% decrease in sales year over year, 71% decrease in profits, and 76% decrease in income, NCSoft had to then announce that no, they will once again not be making their anticipated launch for the next Lineage game; Throne & Liberty.
On the mobile side Lineage M has fared the best with a drop from $107 million in Q2 2022 to a still impressive $97 million in Q2 2023. Lineage 2 mobile fell harder from $73 million to $47 million. Blade & Soul 2, whose release caused NCSoft’s stock to collapse due to public sentiment, is barely making anything by comparison. A mere $3.2 million and a 70% drop in sales from last year.
Meanwhile Lineage W has gone from being NCSoft’s breadwinner and saw a drop of 55% and is now making less than Lineage M. Things stayed more or less consistent on the MMO side with Guild Wars 2 seeing a steady drop in sales with no new expansion pack. The brunt of NCSoft’s losses come from their mobile division crashing hard.
Meanwhile Lineage 3 aka Lineage Eternal aka Project TL aka Throne & Liberty has continued to fail to meet development expectations. The launch originally scheduled for 2017 then delayed to 2018 then delayed to 2019 then delayed to 2020 then delayed to 2021 then delayed to 2022 then delayed to 2023 then delayed to further in 2023 will now be delayed to 2024 until it is delayed to later in 2024 and then to 2025 next year.
Lineage W has also failed to expand outside of its launch region after nearly two years, as has Blade & Soul 2. Why? With the enlistment of third party publishers, the layoffs at NCSoft West, the collapse of the NFT market that NCSoft was going to capitalize in the west and more, it seems easily explainable that NCSoft doesn’t know what they’re doing with the potential of a global release anymore.
But what do I know.
MMO Fallout 