NCsoft Q1 2024: Guild Wars 2 is on one hell of a revenue streak as Throne & Liberty stalls

NCsoft’s Q1 2024 financial report is a tale of two worlds as mobile games continue their decline in popularity. Corporate revenues fell 17% compared to Q1 2023, down to 293M USD.

Readers will recall that in the Q4 report, NCsoft had for the first time in many years (eight, by our count) omitted per-game revenue figures from the slide, which investors (and everyone else) took to be the company’s way of hiding poor Korean launch revenues for the long, long delayed Throne & Liberty.

However, NCsoft has apparently decided to return to form, as in Q1, it’s revealing per-game revenues once again – that is, for all games except Throne & Liberty, which is still not included. Those figures show that overall, NCsoft’s PC MMORPGs are basically steady, pennies away from their Q1 2023 showing as games like Lineage and Guild Wars 2 make up for continuing declines for Blade & Soul and Aion.

Western MMORPG players will be pleased to see that last quarter’s touting of Guild Wars 2 was deserved, as now we have the numbers to back up NCsoft’s claim; in Q4, the game’s revenues were up 5% over Q4 2022, and that trend has continued with Q1 revenues up 24% over Q1 2023.

And while mobile still makes up the majority of NCsoft’s fortunes, mobile revenue has continued to decrease, dropping 25% since Q1 2023 as the Lineage mobile games – most especially Lineage W – lose steam.

As we noted in March, a hostile investor meeting inadvertently revealed plans for Guild Wars 3, though both NCsoft and ArenaNet walked it back later without actually denying anything. We do know that the Guild Wars 2 studio has been hiring for what looks like multiple titles and is working on at least two more expansions for the title.

Throne & Liberty is (weirdly) not mentioned at all in the earnings release document, though the company reiterates in the investor call that it’s still on deck for a global launch; it also touched on Battle Crush, Project BSS, Blade & Soul 2, and Lineage 2M.