If you wondered why NCsoft would drop a bunch of teasers for its pipeline and NFT babble yesterday, it’s largely because it was also dropping its quarterly financial report, which… well, depending on whether you’re a PC, MMO, or mobile fan could be seen as good or bad.
On the whole, and revenue for the company was up significantly in Q4 2021 for the quarter compared to Q3 2021 and Q4 2020, though it saw a large dip in operating profit for the year overall. The majority of that positive income is coming from the mobile side of the business, specifically Lineage W. On the PC side, Classic Lineage – which once was king of NCsoft’s financials – has slumped considerably, down 58% in sales compared to this quarter last year, presumably because the Lineage mobile games pull from the same pool of players. Blade and Soul has also continued a steep revenue decline, while Lineage 2 has held steady. And while Aion’s quarterly numbers declined all last year, it’s still seen a net increase compared to 2019 and 2020, owing to the Aion Classic resurgence.
In fact, on the PC side, the game that steadily increased in revenue all last year was Guild Wars 2, which ended the year up 49% compared to Q4 2021, though it’s still dwarfed by the mobile side. That’s surely driven by the impending End of Dragons and its betas, though apart from that, we largely saw promotional reissued content from the game through 2021.
Project The Lineage is finally expected to debut this year (yes, they’ve said this many times before), along with Lineage W’s global rollout, which ought to help bolster the pipeline. As MMO Fallout noted, NCsoft’s stock has taken a considerable hit since last year, so the company has been inserting itself into the NFT fad, though executives insist the implementation will be for gamers rather than investors and that it won’t engage in play-to-earn shenanigans.
