Tag: Q2 2011

Star Vault Publishes Q2 2011 Finances


Star Vault has published their results for the second quarter of 2011. You can read the report in its native Swedish, or poorly translated by Google. For the sake of convenience, I will post some of the more important information here:

  • Mortal Online has seen an increase in subscriptions and box purchases since Q1.
  • In order to reduce costs, the board of directors has cancelled the liquidity guarantee.
  • According to Henrik Nystrom, a rights issue resulted in enough income to pay off earlier loans.
  • Mortal Online needs 500 more subscribers to achieve “break-even.”
  • Star Vault has partnered with Lekool to publish Mortal Online in Asia (we already knew that)
Although Mortal Online is still not breaking even, Star Vault continues to inch toward that goal with what, despite what some people would like you to believe, appears to be growing in terms of sales and subscribers. Who knows? Mortal Online could be a real surprise comeback.

NCsoft Q2 Release: Profits Up, Aion/Lineage 2 Down


The first thing you’ll notice about NCsoft’s quarterly report for the second quarter of 2011 is a massive spike in sales from Lineage. NCsoft attributes this to strong item sales promotions. As of now, Lineage is the company’s best source of income, despite the game’s removal from its Western presence just a couple of months ago. Lineage’s item sales have propelled a 67% year over year increase in income, despite a 1% decline in overall sales over the same period. City of Heroes and Guild Wars continued a slow decline, although City of Heroes will undoubtedly hit an increase in sales once the game goes free to play later this year.

Lineage’s success, however, comes on the heels of both Lineage II and Aion dropping a hefty amount, attributed to “slow seasonality” in the report. I talked last year about NCsoft’s regional breakdown in sales, as a response to why some western gamers described feeling like NCsoft doesn’t pay the hemisphere as much attention. As of Q2 2010, the regional breakdown is as such:

  1. Korea: 64%
  2. Japan: 10%
  3. Royalties: 7%
  4. N. America: 9%
  5. Europe: 5%
  6. Taiwan: 3%

Those figures in Q2 2011:

  1. Korea: 71%
  2. Japan: 10%
  3. Royalties: 9%
  4. N. America: 4%
  5. Europe: 3%
  6. Taiwan: 3%