Given the strange financial quarters that Blizzard, Funcom, Square-Enix, and Nexon had, you’re surely wondering how NCsoft fared. And the answer is… about the same as usual, actually. In its third quarter 2019 investor report, NCsoft announced that its revenues were down slightly, by 3% quarter-over-quarter and 1% year-over-year. In fact, the company’s sales have maintained pretty steadily all year, save for that blip in the first quarter.
But it’s the games you likely care about. In spite of NCsoft’s increasing focus on mobile, its mobile sector actually suffered declines this quarter, compared to its quartet of PC titles. Lineage, Lineage II, Aion, and Blade & Soul all saw modest revenue increases, while Guild Wars 2 declined slightly in spite of the release of the Bound by Blood prelude episode (but again it’s right in line with revenues all year). “Mobile games declined 5%, due to limited in-game item promotions, in light of the Lineage M large-scale update in 4Q,” NCsoft says. Before you get too excited, recall that all five of NCsoft’s PC MMORPGs together bring in only slightly more than half what mobile alone does, and of course most of that revenue comes from Korea itself.
Reddit, mind you, is all abuzz right now because of the revelation that NCsoft just pumped a $112M US in investment into NCWest. We don’t know what for, though we’ve certainly got a few ideas (and not just build slots!), chief among them the mobile game ArenaNet is supposedly working on (or working on again) – a theory boosted by the fact that NCsoft talked up the western console and mobile market during the Q&A portion of the call. We wouldn’t be sad about Guild Wars 3 or a new expansion, either.
