Tag: Lineage

NCSoft Q4 2016: Wildstar Disappears From Report


NCSoft has released their fourth quarter financial statements and the news is quite positive. Compared to the same period last year, sales rose 20% with operating profit up 36% over the same period, thanks to strong performance from major IPs and strong launches in the mobile market. The report notes that sales have hit a historic high thanks to geographical expansion and new business models.

Over on the game’s front, Lineage 1 continues to impress with a 42% increase in sales over last year, an insane jump for an MMO that is going on nineteen years old. Another title to see solid annual growth was Blade & Soul, which continues to be popular as it rolls out worldwide. Lineage II saw a fair amount of growth while Guild Wars 2 continues to rock steadily as it awaits a new expansion pack. The other category contains Lineage Red Knights, whose successful rollout boosted the category by 97%.

One game you may note as missing from the sales breakdown is Wildstar. It isn’t there. It appears that the game’s sales have dropped enough that it is no longer worth listing as a product separate from the “other” category.

(Source: NCSoft Finance)

NCSoft’s Q3 Finances Are Here: Wildstar, Wildstar, Wildstar


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NCSoft’s latest quarterly reports are here, and that means it’s time to speculate on the future of City of Heroes, or Wildstar depending on what year you live in. Financially, NCSoft did pretty well in the third quarter, with sales up 11% over last year, profit up 29%, pre-tax income up 22%, and net income up 56%. As I said last year, the third quarter is the one where sales generally drop as developers run less promotions and everything is gearing up toward a higher fourth quarter. If the fourth quarter does worse than the third, you’re in bad shape. In consideration of the normal drop off from Q3 to Q4 coupled with some of the events that took place last quarter, I find it unlikely that anyone at the NCSoft offices are running around with their heads on fire.

So let’s talk about game performance, since NCSoft is virtually the only major publisher to post this kind of specific data. Lineage, while it did see a drop in income this quarter, continues to grow year over year as does Blade & Soul (although quarterly sales have been dropping). Lineage 2 showed the strongest growth for the quarter, while Guild Wars 2 continues to slump in sales following the fervor over its first expansion launch.

Now it’s time to talk about Wildstar. It sounds like a broken record at this point, but Wildstar has hit its lowest point in sales. Wildstar’s previous low was $1.13 million USD back before the free to play launch. Right now the game sits at approximately $940,000.

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NCSoft CFO Yoon Jae-soo discussed NCSoft’s titles and their futures. Lineage, currently enjoying major success, is expected to continue rising in sales with a growth trajectory and a fourth quarter increase driven by new servers launched last year. Lineage 2, meanwhile, is showing a stable upward trend and is expected to perform better in 2016 compared to 2015. Blade & Soul is performing soundly with stable performance in both regions and is expected to show stable growth going into next year. As for Guild Wars 2, Arenanet continues development on a second expansion pack which will give a boost in sales.

Over on the Lineage Eternal side, signups are now open for the closed beta…in Korea. When asked about their development strategy, Yoon Jae-soo responded that NCSoft’s strategy with Lineage Eternal involves lowering system requirements so that the game can function on a variety of systems while making it “less challenging and less difficult” for new players who aren’t as familiar with the game. As for Lineage M, a mobile port of Lineage, the team expects to have something to show in the first quarter while not anticipating much in the way of migration from Lineage players.

Continued coverage of NCSoft’s finances will resume with NCSoft’s Q4 release in February.

Lineage Eternal Still Coming: Latest Trailer Released


NCSoft has dropped the latest trailer video for Lineage Eternal, the long awaited sequel to the company’s largest (and after close to two decades still its biggest money maker) MMO Lineage. For those keeping track, Lineage Eternal has gone through several delays plus a development team that isn’t too keen on discussing release schedules. With the beta set to launch this month in Korea (keep your fingers crossed), it looks like the game is finally on track for launch early next year.

NCSoft’s next quarterly report comes out this month, and will no doubt offer some level of insight into Lineage Eternal’s upcoming launch in Korea and internationally.

NCSoft: All Key IPs Showed Stable Sales Last Quarter


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NCSoft has released their second quarter results and the news is good, even for those of you who play Wildstar. The Korean developer published a 28% boost in operating profit over last year with a 27% bump in pre-tax income and a 56% increase in net income. US and EU shares of NCSofts revenues plummeted, shedding a third of its value while Japan grew slightly as did Taiwan. According to NCSoft’s reports, while Blade & Soul grew heavily year over year thanks to its launch in the west, recent performance has seen a drop in royalties coming from the Chinese division.

On the game’s front, Lineage continues to sell more than virtually every other game in NCSoft’s library combined, with Aion and Guild Wars 2 taking a hit. Guild Wars 2, you can see, is suffering heavily from a content drought and subsequently saw its revenues fall flat over the past quarter. Based on the success of Heart of Thorns, it makes sense for Arenanet to adopt a strategy similar to World of Warcraft, living off of gem and microtransaction sales with small updates filling the gap between large, probably as-close-to-annual-as-they-can-get big expansion releases. The goal, according to NCSoft, is to decrease the amount of time between expansion releases to keep momentum up, however no further details have been discussed.

Aion, meanwhile, is performing fine. It may seem like a bad hit from the outside, but NCSoft has stated its expectations put the game within the 17 to 20 billion Won range, the game merely performed on the lower end of expectations. No one in the NCSoft offices is running around with their hair on fire over this news, however the game does have a major update coming that they expect will bring in increased revenue in the fourth quarter.

Wildstar, meanwhile, grew thanks to a launch on Steam introducing the free to play MMO to thousands of new eyes. Peak players fell off after the first month with a peak of 2,700 in July compared to 5,200 in June. Wildstar’s long term performance following its free to play revival and Steam launch will have to be observed, but it would be bad business for anyone at NCSoft to anticipate sales higher than 3 billion Won ($2.7 million USD) per quarter. Now that the team has a more realistic idea on where the game’s cash ceiling is, they can budget appropriately and NCSoft can figure out where they want to go with the IP.

Nexon’s upcoming list of releases includes Lineage Eternal as well as numerous mobile games including several based off of the Lineage franchise, increasing marketing costs and naturally boosting revenues. When asked about the release of Lineage Eternal, NCSoft’s response was…some information. According to the investor call, development is on schedule however there isn’t any concrete information on the closed beta. The team believes that the most effective timing would be around the holiday break period, so Korean gamers should mark their calendars for late November. The game is presently in the polishing stage.

Blade & Soul Mobile did not perform as well as anticipated.

Incidentally, NCSoft completely glossed over Wildstar in discussing each game’s performance in the investor call, lumping it in with the “other” category. Make of that what you will. Lineage Revolution is expected to have a November launch.

(Source: NCSoft, NCSoft investor call)

NCSoft Updated Timeline


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It’s been three years since MMO Fallout last published the NCSoft Timeline, and it’s about time for an update. As it was back in 2013, the graph shows NCSoft’s timeline of support for their major MMOs, from their date of launch to their current state. Some figures may seem innaccurate as they start at the earliest launch, that being in Korea.

I plan on running more charts like this in the future.

(Source: MMO Fallout)

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)

NCSoft Q2 2014 Finances


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NCSoft has posted their second quarter finances for 2014 and the results are looking good across the board. Thanks to strong launches including Guild Wars 2 in China and Wildstar in the US and EU, NCSoft saw a 20% increase in sales, a 46% increase in profit, and a 45% increase in net income over the previous quarter. Lineage 1, meanwhile, increased in sales thanks to a solid base.

Wildstar debuted to $27 million in sales during its first posted quarter. Sales in Europe and North America have been consolidated into a single metric, not so surprising when you consider that Europe had dropped to just 3% of NCSoft’s sales with North America at 13%.

Classic Servers: Another Developer "Gets It."


noedits

Private servers are a very stingy subject in the gaming press. Many developers don’t like to acknowledge them and, honestly, there is at least one of my contacts who will never return my emails after this article just for the act of referencing their existence. MMO Fallout does not condone private servers, nor do we allow them to be advertised in our comments section. I like to think that private servers can be an important tool for developers to gauge their audience’s expectations, however. Private servers that exist simply to cheat, to bypass a subscription, or gain accelerated experience/items will always exist, and those don’t offer much of a lesson outside of that some gamers are unwilling to invest the time or money.

As more developers are realizing, however, there is a great opportunity in classic servers. Jagex has not only maintained the original RuneScape Classic, but launched a version of 2007 RuneScape that remains updated thanks solely to the majority vote of its community. Sony Online Entertainment has, for a long time now, dabbled in classic and progression servers for Everquest. Ragnarok Online launched a classic server back in 2012, and NCSoft recently announced a classic server for Lineage II, at least the Korean version.

There are a million legitimate reasons why a developer wouldn’t want to create their own classic servers. A classic server would need some form of monetization, where a cash shop would risk driving away the target audience and a subscription would put the server in competition with those same private servers that operate for free. The developer could, however, capitalize on this very issue. A dedicated developer could offer stability and quality where many classic servers are at risk of shutting down at moment’s notice, operate on inferior server infrastructure, and are partially hand-built by the operator due to the inaccessible nature of certain MMO mechanics (server side operations).

Other developers refuse to create a classic server on the grounds that doing so would compromise their “artistic vision,” a belief that MMOs change with time and that introducing a classic server would be counter to that vision, or an admission that they made the wrong choice somewhere down the line. Further developers cite an unwillingness to risk splitting the community in half.

Happily, it appears that more developers are recognizing the potential for classic servers or those with alternate rulesets.

Classic Servers: Another Developer “Gets It.”


noedits

Private servers are a very stingy subject in the gaming press. Many developers don’t like to acknowledge them and, honestly, there is at least one of my contacts who will never return my emails after this article just for the act of referencing their existence. MMO Fallout does not condone private servers, nor do we allow them to be advertised in our comments section. I like to think that private servers can be an important tool for developers to gauge their audience’s expectations, however. Private servers that exist simply to cheat, to bypass a subscription, or gain accelerated experience/items will always exist, and those don’t offer much of a lesson outside of that some gamers are unwilling to invest the time or money.

As more developers are realizing, however, there is a great opportunity in classic servers. Jagex has not only maintained the original RuneScape Classic, but launched a version of 2007 RuneScape that remains updated thanks solely to the majority vote of its community. Sony Online Entertainment has, for a long time now, dabbled in classic and progression servers for Everquest. Ragnarok Online launched a classic server back in 2012, and NCSoft recently announced a classic server for Lineage II, at least the Korean version.

There are a million legitimate reasons why a developer wouldn’t want to create their own classic servers. A classic server would need some form of monetization, where a cash shop would risk driving away the target audience and a subscription would put the server in competition with those same private servers that operate for free. The developer could, however, capitalize on this very issue. A dedicated developer could offer stability and quality where many classic servers are at risk of shutting down at moment’s notice, operate on inferior server infrastructure, and are partially hand-built by the operator due to the inaccessible nature of certain MMO mechanics (server side operations).

Other developers refuse to create a classic server on the grounds that doing so would compromise their “artistic vision,” a belief that MMOs change with time and that introducing a classic server would be counter to that vision, or an admission that they made the wrong choice somewhere down the line. Further developers cite an unwillingness to risk splitting the community in half.

Happily, it appears that more developers are recognizing the potential for classic servers or those with alternate rulesets.

NCSoft Annual Revenue Chart


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I’ve been meaning to create this for quite a while now, but I finally got around to compiling a chart for NCSoft’s yearly sales figures on a per-game basis. Looking at the chart on a yearly basis rather than quarterly makes the difference in income all the more obvious, especially when you see that Lineage alone makes more than Lineage II, Guild Wars 2, and Aion combined. Lineage is also NCSoft’s only game to provide a consistent and growing cash flow, with Blade & Soul’s progress too early to tell, especially since the game’s exceptional overseas performance is not reflected in the figures above.

Over the next few weeks, I will be working on expanding our charts from NCSoft, Perfect World Entertainment, Funcom, and more.