Tag: Blade & Soul

NCSoft Q4 2013 Looking Good Thanks To Blade & Soul


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NCSoft has released their Q4 2013 finances, and things are looking up for the Korean developer. Following the company’s major dip in the previous quarter, sales have recovered by 24% and profits by 85%, with pre-tax income up a staggering 97% over last quarter. Total sales amounted to $197 million in the fourth quarter, with operating profit at over $54 million. Royalty revenues from Blade & Soul contributed heavily to this outcome, thanks to the game’s ongoing success in China. Lineage continued to grow in Korea despite being the oldest game in the library, with Guild Wars 2 holding strong in its associated territories.

As already stated, Lineage saw a large rise in sales. Guild Wars 2 and Lineage II also saw bumps in revenue, with Aion remaining on a slight decline from the last couple of quarters. While Blade & Soul’s direct revenue decreased over last quarter, this presumably does not factor in sales from royalties in territories where the game is selling quite well. Cost of labor and marketing decreased year over year thanks to layoffs and launches of Guild Wars 2 and Blade & Soul respectively.

(Source: NCSoft Finances)

Blade & Soul Expanding Again…To Japan


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Prepare your expletive buttons, as they are about to get a workout. The good news is, Blade & Soul is once again expanding. Following the game’s massive success in China, NCSoft is following up on its 2011 announcement to bring the game overseas…to Japan. Sorry, westerners, but if you look to your right you will find several expired issues of Highlights magazine* with which to pass the time waiting. There is currently no ETA on when the Japanese servers will launch.

*magazine delivery not currently planned for North America, South America, Europe, and Oceanic regions.

(Source: MMO Culture)

1.5 Million Concurrent On Blade & Soul


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Tencent Games is ready to talk about Blade & Soul’s performance in China, and the results are expectedly enormous. According to Tencent, the peak total concurrent players came up over the 1.5 million mark, with over 450 million creatures killed on the first day. Thousand Soul Demon has been slayed over 7.7 billion times, and the average queue time is apparently around six hours. This is hardly surprising when you factor in that the game launched with two hundred servers, and still had major problems with queues. Blade & Soul has so far exponentially outperformed all of Tencent’s previous games.

As far as Blade & Soul launching in the west, nothing to report.

(Source: MMO Culture)

Blade & Soul Making Bank In China


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Blade & Soul may not be coming westward for a while, but gamers in North America and Europe should be relieved to see that the game is performing exceptionally well in China. According to MMO Culture, not only is Blade & Soul on its way to surpassing two hundred servers, fifteen of which were added last week, the game has eighteen million active users. To top things off, the number of concurrent online users surpassed 1.8 million. To put that into perspective, if you took 1.8 million people, all of them would be playing Blade & Soul.

Look forward to Blade & Soul’s spike in revenue on NCSoft’s next quarterly report.

(Source: MMO Culture)

Two MMOs Moving Overseas, Just Not Your Seas


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Who wants an extra helping of disappointment today? Two MMOs are progressing into new territories, but judging by MMO Fallout’s metrics, they still aren’t coming to your territories. Mail.ru has announced that the closed beta for ArcheAge is set to start in December. Some of you may recall that mail.ru caught some heat over their planned payment system. Players were able to successfully petition the company to change their plans and adopt the Korean model.

Meanwhile, Blade & Soul’s open beta is set to begin next week in China. The open beta client is already available for download and the servers reportedly will not have an IP block, allowing anyone in who feels like joining up.

(Source: Massively.com)

 

Top 5: MMOs That We Can’t Have


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Being a somewhat impatient person is rather incompatible with writing about the MMO genre, an industry where waiting is merely half the battle. Between games announced half a decade before their intended release and those launched in Korea, China, or Japan only to take a further few years to make it over to the west, it’s enough to pull your hair out over. It is especially aggravating when you figure games like Phantasy Star Online 2, who we recently found out may never release in the west at all. Then you have games like Hellgate: London, Lineage, and Dungeon Fighter Online who, despite shutting down in west, continued operation overseas.

So with that in mind, let’s look at the top five MMOs we can’t have, and by we I mean people in the Americas and Europe.

5. ArcheAge

archeage

Despite what some of my readers may believe, I don’t talk about ArcheAge’s content updates to tease you, but I agree with the frustration that I see in many of these articles. ArcheAge, unlike its brothers and sisters, gets so much coverage from western outfits that you’d think the game had already been launched here. Every mention of patch notes and content updates is another reminder of the game’s continued delay and unclear future for westward expansion.

The “why we don’t have ArcheAge” coverage also instills a constant chilling reminder as to the recent business issues surrounding the game’s would-be western publisher, Trion Worlds, between several rounds of layoffs, server mergers, the poor reception of Defiance, allegations of neglecting overseas publishers leading to Rift being shut down in several foreign territories, and the continued difficulties surrounding End of Nations. ArcheAge will eventually release in the west…hopefully. Maybe.

4. Phantasy Star Online 2

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I decided to stick Phantasy Star Online 2 as number four on this list because it is technically playable. While Phantasy Star Online 2 is likely to not hit western markets, due to an alleged lack of faith in the game’s ability to be profitable, many gamers have already signed on to the Japanese servers using an English patch. This process should be made easier when the game releases a localized version for English speaking Asian regions.

3. Blade & Soul

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NCSoft has refused to censor Blade & Soul for the west, but if an uncensored MMO falls in the woods and no one is able to play it, does it make a sound? Blade & Soul has the backing of NCSoft, but the game has quickly dropped down in sales to the levels of Lineage II and “other” and is likely to continue dropping. If the game continues to do poorly, it is possible that the game could be shut down before it ever has the chance to be localized.

But NCSoft isn’t the kind of company that cuts an MMO loose just because it hit some hard times, right?

2. Lineage

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Lineage is particularly painful not just because the game continues to operate in its native Korea after being shut down in the west, but it is outperforming every single one of NCSoft’s other games. Lineage has been NCSoft’s #1 top selling game for the past year and has grown exponentially over the past several quarters. Despite its healthy population in Korea, however, the game was not performing well in America and Europe to continue supporting the localized version.

The good news at least is that while Lineage I is over aside from private servers, Lineage Eternal will probably release before the world ends.

1. Black Gold Online

Black-Gold-Online-2-620x350

 

Black Gold Online is likely to release before any of the other games on this list, but it is the most interesting concept so I decided to put it at number one. If you don’t know, Black Gold Online is by the creatively brilliant minds at Snail Games who brought us Age of Wushu, and carries one of the more interesting monetization models of recent titles. It is difficult to understand, and I am not entirely sure that I have explained it properly, but the game has no cash shop or subscription, but instead monetizes drops in some fashion.

So far all we have seen is this concept in theory, and it could go either way in terms of its reception. Assuming we ever get it.

Top 5: MMOs That We Can't Have


hellgate3

Being a somewhat impatient person is rather incompatible with writing about the MMO genre, an industry where waiting is merely half the battle. Between games announced half a decade before their intended release and those launched in Korea, China, or Japan only to take a further few years to make it over to the west, it’s enough to pull your hair out over. It is especially aggravating when you figure games like Phantasy Star Online 2, who we recently found out may never release in the west at all. Then you have games like Hellgate: London, Lineage, and Dungeon Fighter Online who, despite shutting down in west, continued operation overseas.

So with that in mind, let’s look at the top five MMOs we can’t have, and by we I mean people in the Americas and Europe.

5. ArcheAge

archeage

Despite what some of my readers may believe, I don’t talk about ArcheAge’s content updates to tease you, but I agree with the frustration that I see in many of these articles. ArcheAge, unlike its brothers and sisters, gets so much coverage from western outfits that you’d think the game had already been launched here. Every mention of patch notes and content updates is another reminder of the game’s continued delay and unclear future for westward expansion.

The “why we don’t have ArcheAge” coverage also instills a constant chilling reminder as to the recent business issues surrounding the game’s would-be western publisher, Trion Worlds, between several rounds of layoffs, server mergers, the poor reception of Defiance, allegations of neglecting overseas publishers leading to Rift being shut down in several foreign territories, and the continued difficulties surrounding End of Nations. ArcheAge will eventually release in the west…hopefully. Maybe.

4. Phantasy Star Online 2

pso2_title

I decided to stick Phantasy Star Online 2 as number four on this list because it is technically playable. While Phantasy Star Online 2 is likely to not hit western markets, due to an alleged lack of faith in the game’s ability to be profitable, many gamers have already signed on to the Japanese servers using an English patch. This process should be made easier when the game releases a localized version for English speaking Asian regions.

3. Blade & Soul

cat

NCSoft has refused to censor Blade & Soul for the west, but if an uncensored MMO falls in the woods and no one is able to play it, does it make a sound? Blade & Soul has the backing of NCSoft, but the game has quickly dropped down in sales to the levels of Lineage II and “other” and is likely to continue dropping. If the game continues to do poorly, it is possible that the game could be shut down before it ever has the chance to be localized.

But NCSoft isn’t the kind of company that cuts an MMO loose just because it hit some hard times, right?

2. Lineage

11

Lineage is particularly painful not just because the game continues to operate in its native Korea after being shut down in the west, but it is outperforming every single one of NCSoft’s other games. Lineage has been NCSoft’s #1 top selling game for the past year and has grown exponentially over the past several quarters. Despite its healthy population in Korea, however, the game was not performing well in America and Europe to continue supporting the localized version.

The good news at least is that while Lineage I is over aside from private servers, Lineage Eternal will probably release before the world ends.

1. Black Gold Online

Black-Gold-Online-2-620x350

 

Black Gold Online is likely to release before any of the other games on this list, but it is the most interesting concept so I decided to put it at number one. If you don’t know, Black Gold Online is by the creatively brilliant minds at Snail Games who brought us Age of Wushu, and carries one of the more interesting monetization models of recent titles. It is difficult to understand, and I am not entirely sure that I have explained it properly, but the game has no cash shop or subscription, but instead monetizes drops in some fashion.

So far all we have seen is this concept in theory, and it could go either way in terms of its reception. Assuming we ever get it.

NCSoft Q1 2013 Finances


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(I apologize for the outdated screenshot. I will update with a graph once I’m in front of a real computer.)

NCSoft has released their first quarterly report for 2013, and I’m sure we are all wondering how Guild Wars 2 will perform following the initial rush, so let’s dive in. Sales remained strong in 2013 thanks to Guild Wars 2, Aion, and Lineage. Profit is understandably down since last quarter’s launch of Guild Wars 2, however NCSoft’s year over year figures are amazing: 31% higher sales, 348% increased profits, 256% pre-tax income, and 322% net income over Q1 2012.

Lineage 1 continues to be NCSoft’s big seller, consisting of 38% of the total game sales in Q1, with Guild Wars 2 at 21% and Aion at 16%. Aion and Lineage saw an increase in sales quarter over quarter while Lineage II, Guild Wars, and Blade & Soul saw a mild to heavy loss. NCSoft as a parent company has thankfully recovered from being in the red last quarter for pre-tax income and net income.

Korea remains NCSoft’s largest market at 64%, with North America and Europe dropping by about half to 13% and 8% respectively, Japan’s 7% percentage share remained the same even though sales dropped. Sales in Taiwan increased slightly, remaining at 1%. Royalties dropped about one third in total, remaining at the 6% percentage value from the last quarter.

As usual, Guild Wars is bundled in with the “other” and is not represented by its own category. For legal reasons, I must remind you that these results are un-audited and may be subject to change during the auditing process.

NCSoft Refuses To Censor Blade & Soul For The West


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Just once I’d like to see a game receive a mature rating because the content is so hard hitting that it requires an adult mindset to digest. Until then, however, we’re going to have to deal with the fact that an MMO’s ESRB rating is generally directly proportional to the level of exposure of a certain part of the female anatomy. Of course I’m speaking of breasts, whether large, small, and of all shapes and sizes. In the past few years, we’ve seen a number of titles translated for the western audiences that end up being censored out of fear of either controversy or a bad rating by the ESRB/PEGI. These censors usually end up affecting classes/characters who could be misconstrued as underage, when they are simply small and petite.

A few gamers noted that a recent trailer for Blade & Soul that the game appears to have several alterations, adding some clothing where it didn’t exist in the Korean version. NCSoft released a press statement clarifying that they have only the utmost respect for Team Bloodlust, and that the censored models are solely for promotional purposes.

Due to ESRB guidelines, however, our marketing material must abide by a different set of considerations than the final product. This is why Blade & Soul‘s rating is listed as “pending.” It is NCSOFT West’s intention to accurately depict the game in its original, unaltered form, with only minor adjustments for gameplay considerations. In short: We are not planning to censor or alter the actual in-game content you have come to expect from an artist such as Hyung-Tae Kim and a studio such as Team Bloodlust. Rest assured that we love Blade & Soul as much as you do, and any modifications to the marketing material are not indicative of our plans for the final content.

More on Blade & Soul as it appears.

(Source: Blade & Soul)

NCSoft Q4 2012 Records Historical High Quarterly Revenue


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Click me for a bigger picture.

Talk about springing back. Strong sales in Lineage, Guild Wars 2, Blade & Soul, as well as mobile games, NCSoft has recorded historical high quarterly revenues for the fourth quarter of 2012. In the latest report, NCSoft marked a 56% increase in quarterly sales, a 208% increase in quarterly operating profit, 110% increase in pre-tax income, as well as a 116% quarterly increase in net income. The fourth quarter saw moderate to high increases in sales for Lineage, Lineage II, with the sales from Guild Wars 2 nearly tripling during the same period. Aion, as well as NCsoft’s latest title, Blade & Soul, saw marginal decreases over the same time period. Lineage II managed to reverse, at least for this quarter, a downward trend in sales that began in Q4 2011 while the original Lineage continues on an unpredictable, yet averaging upward, trend in sales despite its age.

Guild Wars 2 has already proven itself as NCSoft’s most successful product to date, breaking the record set by Aion during its peak sales by a long shot. NCsoft’s parent-company reports are, sadly, not as inspiring. While sales went up 15% quarterly, quarterly operating profit went down 1% with pre-tax income and net income both falling hard and ending up in the red for Q4.

And to wrap this up, we’ll look at everyone’s favorite part of NCSoft’s quarterly reports: Demographics. As expected from the launch of Guild Wars 2 and Blade & Soul, sales in Korea shot up with North America and Europe also taking a dramatic shift upward. Sales in Japan and Taiwan mostly remained the same while sales from royalties were boosted slightly.