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Category: Featured
NCSoft Third Quarter Finances
NCSoft has released their third quarter finances, and the news is good. While sales decreased 1% since last quarter, they amounted to approximately $195 million. Operating profit increased 25% quarter over quarter to $74.15 million, with pre-tax income up 33% and net income up 43% to $79 million and $69 million respectively.
Increased revenue was attributed to sales in Aion, Lineage, Lineage II, and Blade & Soul in Korea. Wildstar’s income dropped substantially, down to $14 million from $27 million during its launch quarter. Guild Wars 2, meanwhile, had its third straight quarter of falling revenue, down to $17.95 million from $21 million last quarter and $31 million of its previous peak in the fourth quarter of 2013. Korea once again made up the bulk of NCSoft’s sales, an increase over last quarter to 65%. The US and EU, which were combined into the same category, amounted to 18% of sales, with Japan at 5%, Taiwan at 1% and an addition 10% from royalties.
(Source: NCSoft)
EA Filing Blames The Old Republic For Revenue Losses
While Bioware has wasted no time discussing how popular The Old Republic is, revealing at Gamescom that over one million players log in monthly, with Super Data Research placing the MMO as among the top ten revenue generators in 2014. In fact it looks like the only people that The Old Republic is currently letting down are the executives at Electronic Arts. In its latest quarterly report, EA Games noted $454 million in revenue over the past three months, primarily driven by FIFA, Titanfall, and Battlefield 4 Premium Edition.
Not all of EA’s properties were up to projections, however, as the company blamed several of its products for a $400 million decrease in revenue.
This increase was partially offset by a $413 million decrease in revenue primarily from the SimCity, Crysis, Dead Space, and The Sims franchises, and Star Wars: The Old Republic.
SimCity and The Old Republic are both responsible for a combined $63 million decrease in revenue, according to another section of the report. It is important to note that both monetary figures are decreases based on internal projections for the quarter, and do not conclude that any of the related studios are running at a loss.
(Source: EA Games Filing)
Gaming For Good Raising $20 Million For Charity
While other gaming websites are busy declaring the death of the gamer, they’ve managed to ignore Gaming For Good, a charity platform that brings gamers togethers and rewards donations with video games. The way the system works is that you donate to get points, and those points can be spent on game keys. Gaming for Good doesn’t see a single cent of the donations, and neither do the game developers: the keys are all donated, and there are some triple-a titles on that list.
At the time that this article is published, Gaming for Good has raised $19.8 million of the $20 million goal, and that is in less than three days. The charity event ends on the 19th, so if you have some extra clams, it’d be nice if you could throw some their way. Even if you don’t want any games.
Save the Children is working to reduce the number of malnutrition-related deaths among children under five and women in Ethiopia. ENGINE is the main preventive integrated nutrition project that contributes to this Save the Children impact on the life of Ethiopian Children.
(Source: Gaming For Good)
World of Warcraft is Dying: Subscriptions Increase
As World of Warcraft continues its descent to an early death, Blizzard has revealed that World of Warcraft has seen a bump in subscribers. The MMO behemoth is currently sitting at 7.4 million, six hundred thousand more subscribers, as of October 14th. The imminent release of Warlords of Draenor expansion is no doubt bringing players back, as the game receives a bump with each expansion’s release.
Warlords of Draenor launches in November.
(Source: WoW Insider)
Side Quest Missing: Presumed Dead
It’s really disappointing to see promising games never receive the attention that they deserve, and an unfortunate reality of the environment we live in today. I wrote an early preview of Side Quest where I had a great time playing, but felt as though the game would receive better exposure as a mobile title, where gamers are more adept to the less involved nature of playing. Unfortunately as it goes, sometimes these games just shut down and disappear without a trace. The Side Quest website went down weeks ago and now returns a 404 error.
Since Fractal Entertainment hasn’t updated their Twitter and Facebook since November 2013, I think it’s safe to assume that this one isn’t coming back. Rest in peace, Side Quest, we hardly knew ye.
City of Heroes: The Mask Comes Off
At this point in time, the idea that there are talks underway to get City of Heroes back up and running isn’t a secret. The previously unnamed team has been negotiating with NCSoft to acquire City of Heroes with the request that the negotiations themselves be kept secret and with the knowledge that the whole deal could fall apart at any moment, or could never have had a chance of succeeding in the first place. Today, Nathan Downes of Missing Worlds Media (who we spoke to in our most recent interview) posted an update on the negotiations.
You can read the entire post at the link below, but Downes summarizes the proposal as it stands currently.
The proposal as it stands right now (this is not a final form, just the current proposal on the table) is this:
- The CoH IP would be spun to its own company, to handle licensing. This company would itself license the existing engine from NCSoft for the creation of a maintenance mode, using a binary copy of the i23 server.
- The existing user database and characters are not part of this arrangement at this time, nor is the source code.
- An arrangement is to be made to license the trademarks to the various Plan Z projects, CoT, Valiance and H&V, to create a family connection, and to allow each to drop the “Spiritual” portion of successor. This means they can make references to the original game if desired, and to enable the expansion of partnerships. This could be expanded for any of them, should the desire be there.
- An arrangement is also to be made for the Atlas Park Revival project. As part of the informal agreement we have with them, they would be given an official stamp of approval, and the CoT game build would be licensed to them, to create a kind of “CoH 1.5” and migrate people off of the classic game engine before it finally becomes unsuitable (we expect this to happen around when Windows 9 is released, due to binary compatibility). This can be done because both APR and CoT run on Unreal Engine 4.
- By being its own firm, the licensing company can also pursue other avenues which were unavailable before.
(Source: Titan Forums)
Play Star Citizen Until September 5th
I know what you’re thinking: “I want to play Star Citizen, but I don’t want to have to pay like five thousand bucks for a ship I’ll probably lose on day one.” You’re in luck, because Roberts Space Industries has announced that attendees to DragonCon are being given a free flight week-end to try out Star Citizen’s Arena Commander module. With the pass, you’ll be able to walk around the hanger module, sit in a trainer ship, and take flight in arena commander. The pass is active until September 5th.
But Connor, I hear you say, I can’t afford to go to DragonCon! Neither can I, which is why regardless of if you actually attended the convention, you can head on to the link below and use the code DRAGONFLIGHT2K14 to get in on the promotion anyway. Check it out and tell us what you think.
(Source: Star Citizen)
RuneScape Companion App Available
Jagex has announced that the RuneScape companion app is now available on iOS and Android devices. Having the companion app gives mobile access to the game’s grand exchange auction house, notifies players when purchases/sales are complete, track in-game activity timers, and chat with their clan. Even if you don’t have a smartphone or tablet, you can still get on board with the web version of the app that has already been available for some time.
The RuneScape companion app requires a device with iOS 7 or newer, Android 4.0 or newer, and is guaranteed to run on devices as far back as iPhone 4, Galaxy S3, Nexus 4, iPad 3rd gen, and iPad mini. The web app runs on a wider range of devices, not to mention personal computers.
(Source: RuneScape)
Trion Worlds Denies Security Breach
If you’ve been following ArcheAge discussion, you’re likely aware of a surge in player claims that their accounts were being subjected to unauthorized attempts to purchase the ArcheAge founders pack. Community Manager Scapes has responded to the allegations by stating that Trion Worlds has not been breached and the purchase attempts are a symptom of the same old account theft that goes on every day.
What happened in the last few hours is sadly nothing new: Every day, bots obtain user credentials from various unprotected sites around the Internet, build lists of login and passwords, and try them on Trion’s servers (along with many other sites). If players consistently use simple or repeated passwords across different online services, these bots may get access to their accounts. Because of the current momentum around ArcheAge, hundreds of millions of such attempts were made from well over a million different IP addresses in the last few weeks, only a fraction of which ended up being successful today.
All players affected by fraudulent charges will be refunded by Trion Worlds, and the Glyph client is being boosted with additional security features.
(Source: ArcheAge forums)
MMO Fallout 