NCsoft Q2 2023: Throne & Liberty delayed as revenues, mobile games, and MMOs decline

While we’ve already covered the major delay to Throne & Liberty revealed during NCsoft’s investor call this week, there was more to the financial report worth calling attention to.

For starters, the company saw continuing declines in revenues as sales fell 30% compared to this quarter last year, and the bulk of that isn’t even from the company’s “legacy PC online games,” which means Guild Wars 2, Lineage, Lineage 2, Aion, and Blade & Soul; those games saw only a 4% net decline over the last year.

Guild Wars 2 had its lowest quarter since the launch of End of Dragons, tipped down only slightly compared to Q1 but falling 29% since the same quarter last year. Presumably, Q3 will see a resurgence as the next expansion launches in just a few more weeks.

Mobile sales – that’s Lineage M, Lineage 2M, Blade & Soul 2, and Lineage W – generally make up the bulk of the company’s revenues, but they took a much larger hit than PC, declining 37% since Q2 2022, owing largely to “weaker Lineage W and Lineage 2M sales.” Blade & Soul 2 is also due to release in more countries next quarter (Japan and Taiwan, apparently), which ought to help, and the studio has another four mobile titles on the way, one of them being Blade & Soul S, which was delayed to 2024. Another is MMORTS Project G, and there’s a little tease for Aion 2 as well.

Ruliweb’s translation of the investor call shows investors nervous about the decline of Lineage W and Lineage 2M in particular; NCsoft says it is working to “strengthen activities” for returning players rather than stabilize the games where they are. Analysts also ask about cannibalizing the existing games’ playerbases, which NCsoft addresses by suggesting that its plan is a structural overhaul and the continuous release of new projects.

And as we noted this morning, while Throne & Liberty has been delayed to next year in the west, Korean fans will see it launch by the end of 2023.