Category: News

Wildstar Soundtrack Coming


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If you’ve ever played Wildstar and really wanted to get your hands on the soundtrack, this news is for you. Carbine Studios and NCSoft have announced that, thanks to a partnership with Sumthing Else Music Works, the official soundtrack for Wildstar will be hitting digital stores beginning later this month. The soundtrack will be released in waves, with Volume 1 out May 31st.

Sumthing Else Music Works is the industry leader in licensing and distributing video game soundtracks. Their list of partners is massive and includes well known franchises like Assassin’s Creed, Halo, Far Cry, and Hitman.

Composer Jeff Kurtenacker (Pirates of the Burning Sea) fuses musical elements together that bring space adventure to life. Using synthesizers, a wide array of guitars, and a 75-piece Los Angeles orchestra, Kurtenacker’s approach to theWildStar universe is highly thematic, creating memorable and exciting music that engages players throughout their MMO experience.

You can pre-order the soundtrack and check out what else SEMW has to offer at their official website.

Electronic Arts Posts Growth In Q4 2016


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Electronic Arts has posted its year end results for the fiscal year 2016, and everything is coming up profit. The publishing behemoth raked in $4.5 billion in revenue this past year, up from the $4.3 billion in the fiscal year ending in 2015. According to the company’s own projections, the next year should continue the trend with an estimated $4.9 billion.

As sales of digital goods climb, packaged games continued to lose market share. Digital revenue has taken over physical media by a growing margin, $2.5 billion compared to $2.0 billion, while EA’s profit margin has increased to an eye-popping 82.7%. PC gamers make up 26% of EA’s revenue while consoles account for 51% with mobile making up the rest. The console market had the strongest growth the past year, a 22% increase in revenue year over year.

Gamers hoping to see the end of downloadable content will have to wait another year, as customers spent $1.1 billion on “extra content,” a separate figure from the $570 million spent on mobile. Subscriptions and ad revenue made up $339 million while full game downloads accounted for about half a billion.

Fiscal year 2017 sees the launch of several big name titles, including Battlefield 1, Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, and Mass Effect Andromeda.

There was no mention of The Old Republic that we could find in any of the documents.

(Source: EA)

Get WoW Free With Your Movie Ticket


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The Warcraft movie launches in theaters somewhere between May 26th and June 10th, depending on your country, and you might find yourself leaving the theater thinking “boy that was a great film, if only they’d adapt it into a video game.” Well, Blizzard has you covered, and prepared for this moment by releasing World of Warcraft way back in 2004. To sweeten the deal, if you buy your Warcraft ticket from participating retailers, you’ll be able able to redeem a free copy of the game.

There are 11 European countries participating in the giveaway. For those on the other side of the Atlantic, North American movie-goers will be able to nab a free copy if they purchase their tickets through Regal Cinemas, United Artists Theaters, and Edwards Theaters. Latin American viewers can buy their tickets through ingresso.com, while Australia and New Zealand can go through HOYTS.

Check the link below to see where your country stands on the list.

(Source: Participating retailers)

Jagex Responds To Old School Ban Controversy


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Old School RuneScape’s Community Manager took to the game’s subreddit today to address a controversy that sparked up over a number of accounts getting banned overnight for alleged harassment of a popular streamer. According to player allegations, people were banned for the simple act of standing near the streamer while playing emotes.

The story Jagex is telling is very different from the one being passed around between members of the community. According to Jagex, the players were banned for a string of racist and abusive messages, and that only one person was permanently banned which was for dressing up as a KKK member.

Recently, several players were banned for repeatedly harassing a number of people within the community. We want to make one thing clear in this post: the actions of these players were completely unacceptable and we will not tolerate racism or harassment in Old School RuneScape.

The post goes on to state that Jagex took action on players who “spent their time spreading racism hatred, and abuse throughout the game.” Later on in the same Reddit thread, Kemp explains that the reason players were banned for “bug abuse” was because of the length that the ban carries.

Jagex has refused to publish the transcript evidence of players banned for abuse, due to not wanting to publicize the activity and out of fear that it would create a precedent obligating the company to release the transcripts every time someone demands it.

MMO Fallout will update if we get any more details.

 

(Source: Reddit)

What Happened: Missing Ink Edition


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What Happened is a series of articles partially inspired by you, the community, and otherwise brought on by a fleeting moment where the flapping wires in my brain connect and memories are able to get through. Given the long development nature of MMOs, it isn’t uncommon to have a game announced and then never hear from it again, the developer drifting silently into the night only to resurface somewhere in another dimension.

I last talked about The Missing Ink in 2014, even then asking what happened to the game and its development crew at Redbedlam. The game (pictured above) shut down in early 2014 with the note that it would be coming back later that year, and we haven’t heard anything since. None of the social media accounts have been maintained since that announcement, and the game is clearly dead.

So what happened to Redbedlam? Are they dead as well? You might think so, but they are alive and kicking. They released a game last October, a shooter called Bedlam that has quite an odd mishmash of visual styles. Bedlam is available on sale today both on Steam and on Indiegala, the latter being much cheaper, and it currently holds a “very positive” rating on Steam.

It’s safe to say that The Missing Ink has probably been shelved for now, if not indefinitely, but it’s good to see that Redbedlam is still actively creating games that people like to play.

Wildstar Dropping NCoin, Picking Up Protobucks


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Hot off the heels of NCSoft’s first quarter finances, Carbine Studios has announced that Wildstar is dropping NCoin as its currency of choice for real-world purchases. Beginning May 18th, players will no longer purchase NCoin for Wildstar, nor will your wallet share between NCSoft’s games. Instead, you’ll need to purchase the game-specific currency available at the same rate, except now in its own segregated system.

According to the post, costs of items will remain the same, however the new currency will allow Carbine to introduce bonus tiers. Buy $10 or more in currency and receive bonus Protobucks. For players with NCoin already in their accounts, they have until June 15th in order to convert any NCoin to Protobucks or they will no longer be usable. Bonus Protobucks will be distributed June 22nd based on how much is converted.

One important note is that once NCoin have been converted to Protobucks, they cannot be changed back.

(Source: Wildstar)

NCSoft Sales Boom, Wildstar Flounders In Q1


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NCSoft has officially released their first quarter financial documents, and there is plenty to be happy about (providing you are not a developer on or player of Wildstar). Sales hit a boom with a 28% increase over the same time last year while profits over the same period jumped 70%. Pre-tax income flew up 67% while net income soared to a grandiose 86% increase.

Much of the increase is thanks to Blade & Soul, driven by the US/EU launch the title is now NCSoft’s second highest grossing product below the original Lineage. US/EU sales jumped 136% over last year thanks primarily to Blade & Soul while the title also grew revenues in China by 15%.

Aion saw a small boost in sales while Guild Wars 2, Lineage II, and Wildstar all saw a loss of revenue. The boost in profit is even more amazing when put alongside an increase in labor costs, box and merchandise production.

And now the bad news: Wildstar’s sales have officially dropped to its lowest point, 1,282 KRW in MN or $1.09 million approximately USD. The game’s income is, at this point in time, virtually negligible for NCSoft as a company, and the switch to free to play has clearly just delayed the inevitable. With the cancellation of Wildstar’s Chinese launch and the allegation by Polygon that NCSoft confirmed the game’s imminent closure at the last round of layoffs, both fans and the developers should start prepping their resumes if they haven’t already.

I want to put this into perspective for the “Wildstar is fine” comments that will show up here and in reference to this article on other websites. NCSoft’s revenues for Q1 came to 204,848 KRW in MN, that is 204.8 billion Won. Wildstar made up 1.282 billion of that, or 0.6258% of the total revenue. The three month period in the report runs from January to March, a period that has 91 days. 91 days translates to 2,184 hours.

Wildstar was worth 13.66 hours of NCSoft’s time over the last three months. It is worth less than half of City of Heroes (2,855) at the time NCSoft shut down Paragon Studios and fired the team with barely any warning. Just a fraction more than Guild Wars (1,277) was when NCSoft halted development. Increasingly less than Tabula Rasa (2,007) when it was delisted and the servers were shut down.

It’s over, folks.

(Source: NCSoft)

Star Trek Online Coming To PS4, Xbox One


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Perfect World Entertainment and Cryptic Studios today announced that Star Trek Online, the free to play MMORPG based on Gene Roddenberry’s creation, will be coming to consoles this Fall. When it launches on both Playstation and Xbox, players will be able to access the base game plus six years of content added in, over 130 episodes that build upon classic Star Trek Stories.

Learning from the success of Neverwinter on Xbox One, console players will enjoy upgraded visuals and an enhanced user experience, with controls tailor made for use with a controller.

No word yet on further console releases. Stay tuned for more details.

(Source: Perfect World Entertainment)

Square Enix Sales Boom In 2016


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(Editor’s note: Before we dive in, I’ll remind viewers that Square Enix operates on a different fiscal year that ends March 31st. As a result, while most other companies are reporting their first quarter finances this month, Square Enix is on Q4 for the 2016 fiscal year. This is not a mistake on our part)

Square Enix has released its end of year results for the 2016 fiscal year, and the results are pretty positive across the board. Net sales grew 27.5% over the same period last year while operating income boosted 58% and normal income rose 49%.

Much of Square Enix’s success has been attributed to the strong releases of mobile titles alongside the console releases of Rise of the Tomb Raider and Just Cause 3. Over on the MMO side, the company also had a fair amount of praise for the continued success of Final Fantasy XIV and Dragon Quest X. While sales of merchandise derived from IPs increased, sales from comic books remained sluggish compared to last year.

Square Enix has a slew of titles ready to launch over the next year, including Rise of the Tomb Raider (PS4), Final Fantasy XV, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Dragon Quest Heroes II, Kingdom Hearts 2.8, World of Final Fantasy, and more.

(Source: Square Enix)

Nexon Boasts 11% Boost In Sales


Riders of Icarus

Nexon has posted its latest financial statement for the first quarter 2016 and the results are indeed something to write home about. First quarter revenue amounted to 57.5 billion yen ($530 million USD), an 11% increase over the same period last year. Sales were driven partially due to the higher-than-anticipated sales of Dungeon&Fighter in China.

Alternately, operating income underperformed primarily due to the impairment loss on Gloops’ goodwill of 22.6 billion yen. Nexon bought Gloops for $486 million cash back in 2012. Impairment loss refers to the cost of acquisition minus the depreciation.

Nexon’s earnings call will take place later this morning.

(Source: Nexon press release)