Not that this will prevent any hate-mail, but I’ve included a nice chart on NCSoft’s sales for reference. Falling Out releases a new edition every Monday.
Tag: Aion
NCSoft Q2 2012: Profits Down, Revenue Up
NCSoft has released its finances for the second quarter of 2012, and considering that the major MMO news sites suddenly care enough to report on it, I can only assume that there is some drama to be had. Compared to last quarter, revenues are up thanks to solid Lineage sales and royalties, however NCSoft is in the red on operating profit and net income due to what the company refers to as “one-off labor costs.” Here are the bullet points of important details to explain why NCSoft’s profits sunk so low:
- Lineage sales were strong Korea, however Aion sales tanked due to “scaled back in-game item sales.”
- Labor costs surged 27% this past quarter due to severance-pay.
- Royalty expenses increased 35%
- Marketing expenses were up 112% over last quarter due to Blade & Soul
- D&A increased 28%
- NCSoft’s acquisition of Ntreev also ended up being a major cost.
While sales in Korea and Japan held strong, sales in North America continued a slight decline over last quarter. Europe has been hit the hardest, with sales decreasing to virtually nothing (less than 1% of sales for the quarter).
The launch of Guild Wars 2 is expected to make up for any losses incurred this quarter.
NCSoft Master Accounts To Be Merged In The Future
If your NCSoft account was created after July 12, 2012, you can ignore this article. Managing your NCSoft account is about to become slightly easier. In a few months, NCSoft will require all Aion and Lineage II players to migrate their NCSoft Master Accounts over to the new NC Account system. The benefit of this upgrade is that both Lineage II and Aion will pull from the same NCoin pool, meaning players of both titles will not have to fund both games respectively.
Once the account is migrated, players will log in with their email address. There are a few limitations, including that players can only have one of each account from Aion and Lineage II, for instance a player with multiple Aion accounts cannot merge them into one NC Account. Furthermore, unused serial codes will not transfer over to the new system, so any unused codes tagged to your account should be used before the account is migrated.
As of this publishing, migrating existing accounts is not currently available.
(Source: NCSoft)
NCSoft Q1 2012: Aion/Lineage Up, Lineage 2 Down
NCSoft has published their first quarter finances, and as always there is good news and bad news.
- Quarterly sales were up, although profits were down nearly 20% due to increased labor cost, royalty expenses, and other factors.
- Korea grew due with sound in-game item sales, while Japan dropped.
- Aion and Lineage performed strongly.
- Lineage 2 saw a notable loss in sales due to a “weakened user base,” according to the report.
- City of Heroes also dropped in sales, while Guild Wars saw an increase.
The data above is sourced from the official NCSoft earnings releases and is presented in a more digestible form.
NCSoft Reactivating Aion Accounts
Aion free to play technically doesn’t launch until next week, but NCSoft has something all players can get into, past, present, and prospective. Starting today, inactive accounts that are in good standing will be reactivated and able to log on. When Aion Truly Free goes live, a new server Kahrun will be launched. While you cannot play on the server until it goes live, starting today players will be able to create characters and reserve names on the server.
To compensate current players with additional time on their accounts, NCSoft is crediting 40 NCcoins per day remaining on the account (or around 1200 coins for each month you had remaining). The credit may take several days to process, however.
(Source: Aion news)
Aion: Truly Free Coming To North America
Last year, NCSoft announced the upcoming free to play transition of Aion…in Europe. In a rather unsurprising move, the developer announced today that North America will be following. Players will have access to all of the content in Aion free of charge, without restrictions on zones, housing, mounts, quests, etc. In addition, NCSoft promises robust cheat detection to ensure that bots won’t take a choke hold over the game.
As a head start, NCSoft will be launching a “Rallying the Troops” event, offering new players a chance to check out the game with no time limit, but a level cap of 40. Returning players will have the ability to have their accounts reactivated for 14 days in the run up to the launch of Truly Free.
Aion Truly Free hits this spring.
(Source: Aion Truly Free)
NCSoft Q4 Finances: Sales/Profit Down
NCSoft has posted their fourth quarter finances. Sales were hit with a 6% loss since the last quarter, with operating profit reportedly taking a 51% hit and net income down 42% since last quarter. NCSoft attributes the decline in sales and profits due to scaled back in-game item sales.
Year over year sales from 2011 compared to 2010 saw a similar drop in revenue by 7%, operating income by 24%, and income by 21%, due to what NCSoft refers to as a weakened user base, and an expansion in research and development. Labor costs increased 9%, marketing increased 25%, and variable expenses grew 7%.
You can see from the chart above that Lineage has continued its dip in sales, which NCSoft attributes to a lack of item sales in-game. Lineage II’s sales opened up somewhat, attributed in the release to “roust sales in Japan.” Aion saw a dip in sales of about 8%, as did Guild Wars (22%), and City of Heroes has shown a 22% increase in sales over Q3.
In terms of regional breakdown, Korea’s stake in NCSoft dived from 69% in Q3 to 60% in Q4. North America rose from 4% to 5% while Europe dipped from 3% to 2%. Japan almost doubled its share, from 12% to 21%, while Taiwan lowered its share from 3% down to 2%. Royalties increased to 10% from 8%.
City of Heroes and Lineage II went free to play recently, with Aion moving free to play in Europe.
(Source: NCSoft Finances)
NCSoft Outsourcing European Hosting?
You know, I hadn’t really noticed until tonight how small NCSoft’s library has become in the west. With the shuttering of Lineage, Auto Assault, Tabula Rasa, Exteel, and Dungeon Runners, us westerners are left with Aion, City of Heroes, Guild Wars, and Lineage 2. Four titles? Granted, we have Blade & Soul (hopefully) coming out at the end of this year, and Wildstar and Lineage Eternal coming at some point in the future.
I can’t help but notice, however, that NCSoft’s personal appearance in Europe has taken a lesser role recently. Lineage II’s European service was recently handed over to Innova for the free to play transition, and when Aion goes free to play early this year, Gameforge is taking over service of that title. So far this is only on NCSoft’s titles in Europe that have transitioned to free to play, with the exception of City of Heroes in which case the two services (US/EU) were merged into one under NCSoft. This leaves Guild Wars.
If I’m lucky, NCSoft will answer my emails about future title publishing.
Aion Free To Play In February…For Europe.
Considering the other titles lately to make the transition, an announcement of free to play from NCSoft or Sony Online Entertainment might be welcoming, but hardly surprising. Over in Europe, NCSoft announced that Aion will be undergoing a change in publisher, to Gameforge, who will be taking care of transitioning the European service, and its community, to a new free to play model. Starting in February 2012, players will be able to enjoy everything* that Aion has to offer for no fee.
In order to combat gold farming, “starter” accounts will be limited to two characters and have limitations from certain chat channels and private trading. Former subscribers will have access to almost everything, sans the increased instance cooldown and limited fortress siege rewards. You can read everything at the F2P matrix. Otherwise, NCsoft continues what has started as a rather generous program for free players, offering everything but the kitchen sink to anyone willing to sign up an account.
This does not affect the North American servers, and there are currently no announced plans to bring such a transition to the states.
(Source: Eurogamer)
(Additional: Free to play matrix)
Has Aion Embraced Pay To Win?
Pay to win is a highly controversial label in the MMO business, and I should know. I haven’t even finished the second sentence for this article, yet there is already a mob forming inside of my house ready to beat me to death if I show even a hint of unwavering and militant opposition to the monetary scheme. Going back to our old rule book, it’s important to remember the rule of perception: The important factor is not your intent, it is the player’s reception. If players viewed Turbine’s survey wall as an underhanded, deliberate scam, that is how it will be remembered.
Aion has a special sale going on in the NCsoft store that has managed to ruffle more than a few feathers: The publisher is selling Felicitous Socketing in both Fabled and Eternal flavors, in single sets or bundles of three. The items is single-use and allows you to socket a manastone with 100% success rate. If this makes no sense to you, you’ve probably seen socketing in games like Diablo or Torchlight, except in Aion this system is designed to be unreliable. Failing a socket will cost you the manastone. Couple low success rates with higher level armor/manastones, and you have an expensive recipe for disaster. When researching this topic, I came across a notable amount of posters claiming losses rising up to and over ten million Kinah.
To top it off, the items are only available until October 12th, after which they will be removed from the store. So I’ll leave this one up to the viewers. Do you think this constitutes pay to win?
MMO Fallout 