NCsoft’s second quarter financials for the year hit this morning, and it’s not exactly bad news. Sales are down slightly, but everything looks wimpy next to Lineage M’s record-breaking debut last year. That’s now “stabilized” according to the company, and it also means core Lineage players are flooding back into the original Lineage, which saw its best quarter – by a lot – in over a year.
As for the other live games under NCsoft’s banner that our readers likely care about? They’re all down: Aion, Blade Soul, and Guild Wars 2 across the board, though Guild Wars 2 is still up year-over-year.
Perhaps the most interesting bits coming out of NCsoft this round are still on the horizon. As MMO Culture pointed out, the live conference call dished on The Lineage aka Project TL aka what’s left of Lineage Eternal (it’s hitting beta later this year), admitted PC sales have slowed down, and noted it’ll tailor new games based on the Aion and Blade & Soul IPs to the “global market.”
And yes, multiple new “major” games are in the works for next year, one apparently being Lineage 2 Mobile.
Oh lawd. Three new titles from NC Soft?!
So the Lineage franchise is no longer important for the “global market”? Not sure what kind of expectation is set for the sequel but it would be sad if no more (non-mobile) Lineage games will ever be made.
Hmm. A few thoughts:
Looks like mobile is coming back down to earth, or at least the mortal realm. A significant drop from Q3 of last year can be easily explained though as many mobile games have yet to be realized. It seems they have taken off their blinders though and stopped the insanity as they canceled one of their two BnS mobile games. Net, net, mobile is still the thing but it is not the only thing.
As for the rest? Well, you can see the seasonal trend line there. Pretty common industry-wide. And the mobile bounce really skews the overall numbers which, in this case, is not a bad result as long as Mobile’s trend stabilizes its downward spiral.
GW2 is probably not where most want it to be, but GW2 is retaining more players since HOTs release. Q2 for this year in comparison to Q2 last years bears that out. They need another bounce this fall though to keep building on what has been gained.
B&S is a slightly different story. The game certainly didn’t maintain the momentum from last years content drop for very long. They need another good bounce this fall and an improved effort on retention, which btw, we are already seeing in-game with improved incentives for memberships etc.
I wish we could see the Wildstar numbers. That “Other” category barely gets a mention. But I suppose that is why it is rolled up in there. Still, it would be nice to see if all their efforts have born some fruit.
NCSoft needs to sell CoH or bring it back!
Interesting to see that NcSoft is looking to buy new studios, maybe they should just bring us COH back with the same financial banking as Anet
No mention of WildStar. :-(
They started lumping WildStar within the “other” category a while back.
Heh. Never have I seen a game more in maintenance mode than that game! Not even Guild Wars 1 is in maintenance mode as much as Wildstar.
For a better, less distorted comparison:
And here without the mobile numbers:
Much appreciated. Yes, an interesting view of things.