NCsoft’s Q4 2020 financials are up, and while it was a solid year for the company on the whole, some of its games have me a smidge nervous. The Korean games giant had a relatively flat and quarter and year, never quite making it back to the spike it saw early in 2020 when the pandemic first slammed the world, but its overall 2020 revenues were still up a whopping over 40% compared to revenues in 2019 and 2018.
Where is all that money coming from? As usual, the bulk of it derives from mobile titles in Korea, specifically Lineage M and Lineage 2M. On MOP, however, we’re most interested in the MMORPGs. Guild Wars 2 declined slightly from its Q3 2020 peak but improved on its overall 2019 fortunes, and Blade & Soul posted its lowest revenues all year and continues its yearly decline. But Aion? Aion more than doubled its revenues from its low point in 2020, almost entirely, NCsoft says, due to the launch of Aion Classic. Huh, Classic servers are wildly popular, who knew. (Everybody. Everybody knew.) Still, that only brings Aion in line with its 2019 revenues, and it’s still the lowest-rev MMORPG NCsoft still reports individually.
