NCsoft 2008 profits down and Guild Wars 2 TBA in 2010-2011

by Brooke Pilley Feb 13th 2009 at 1:00PM

Filed under: Fantasy, Aion, News items, Guild Wars 2

After hearing recent news of NCsoft's lay-offs/restructuring at their European studio, it may not come as a surprise that their latest financial report for Q4 2008 is showing a 22% net income loss compared to Q4 2007 even though sales were up 11%. This loss was attributed to higher marketing costs for the quarter. Their overall 2008 net profits plummeted 40% compared to 2007. The high quarterly marketing costs probably had a lot to do with their Korean release of Aion, which accounted for 3% of their overall sales by games in 2008.

What does this mean for fans anxiously anticipating the release of Guild Wars 2? It means you'll have to wait a while longer. According to an anonymous source and ex-NCsoft employee, the company is heavily focused on both Aion and GW2 right now. After a successful launch in Korea, NCsoft plans to release Aion in Japan and Taiwan in Q3 2009 and in the US and Europe in Q4 2009. With such a strong Aion push in 2009, it seems to leave little room for GW2 in the calendar year. Their strong dedication to each title might explain why GW2 was pushed into 2010-2011 when many fans were hoping for a 2009 launch. Given the marketing costs of promoting Aion in Korea, it would be quite a financial burden to promote both titles simultaneously around the world.

Tags: aion, financial, guild-wars-2, gw2, ncsoft

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

HexDSL said on 1:22PM 2-13-2009

Thanks for some GW 2 news, finally.

I think that this is a nice way of 'fobbing us off' its almost like NC have said "I don't know, stop bugging me about it.... 2010, 2011, sure, whatever!"

Until I see a Beta or a Demo or at least some screen shots I'm giving up on this.

Emperor said on 6:58PM 2-13-2009

I second that :D

Johnny_Velocity said on 1:34PM 2-13-2009

Did you notice how NCSoft eliminated monthly access figures from their key metrics? Now there is no way for investors to assess the health of individual games.

Why? They outright say it is to "safeguard confidential information." The questionf of investors in the Q&A part of the conference call indicate that investors' concerns are that Aion is cannibalizing Lineage and Lineage II numbers (and removing those numbers would help hide the caanibalization). Soon, they can also worry about Chmpions Online and DCUO eating CoH numbers. But is it fair to investors to hide that info?

Also, their 4Q 2008 numbers are inflated due to the Korean won's fluctuation in value. At the tail end of the conference call, they admit that gross revenues may be inflated up to 40% due to changes in currency exchange rates! (40-45% of revenue is from outside Korea, according to the conference call) 4Q 2008 was not at all rosey when you take that into account. The won really tanked the second half of the year. Looks good if you do your accounting in won though!

Lateris said on 2:29PM 2-13-2009

I wish Guildwars would become their own publisher. IO can see why companies are turning to Atari.

Jack said on 2:48PM 2-13-2009

The next gen Blizzard mmo may come out before Guildwars if they go on in that way.

Cithrax said on 5:53PM 2-13-2009

Actually, since Arenanet is responsible for thier own marketing, this won't really affect GW2's launch. However, if NCsoft wants Aion to come out before GW2, then there's nothing they can do. I highly doubt that if GW2 is finished and ready to go, NC will delay it much longer. Guild Wars was my first MMO, and I agree that it could have been better, but I've tried WoW, and it has just as many flaws. Home is where the heart is, and I'll always like GW games best. Can't await for 2, and I hope that they implement persistance well.

Arnie said on 12:07AM 2-14-2009

I dont believe that is true any longer, NCSoft moved all their corporate offices under the leadership of ANet although they do retain some geographically diverse locations. I could be wrong.
All said and done ,they have pretty big ambitions with GW2 and hopefully they achieve all of them.
I hope they do release some info.

Berenixium said on 6:35PM 2-13-2009

Dang, guess Blizz might own my soul after all. :S

Emperor said on 6:58PM 2-13-2009

I've played many MMOs in my day, all free to play. GW was in fact my first commercial MMO and I really enjoyed it, although I consider GW to be a RPG with some MMO elements that must be played online.

I was already expecting this to happen. The game was announced in 2007 and since then Arenanet hasn't mentioned GW2 more than a few times. Basically, only a few short posts to keep us believing it was under development. They want to push the release date to 2010 or 2011 because GW is still selling nicely.

Apr 2005 - GW realeased
Fev 2008 - 5 million units sold / 1.6 million year
Arenanet operating cost - 9 million dollars year

If each game sells for $19 (Europe it's €19 = $24) then they are making an average of 30 million dollars in sales.

You guys do the math...

Metroid said on 4:11AM 2-14-2009

Diablo 3, as well as the other quality MMO's and RPG's announced to come out around 2010, are going to kittenstomp the release of GW2. If Anet had actually done a decent job of announcing and having timely information about GW2, it would of had a chance. Anet really should have tried to do a better job with GW2 stuff, especially after earning a bad reputation for poor skill and class balance and letting GW1 devolve into button-mash-fest for both PvE and PvP. Anet will reap what they have sown when they try to launch their game, its just a shame that all the potential that GW originally had will be lost.

Bossy said on 4:54AM 2-14-2009

At least I give the GW developpers the credit to realise that WotLK world design UPPED the standards once again;

The world solo quests of WotLK were perhaps 20% too easy, the design of the Northrend landscape was breath taking and the new tank and artillery pieces of Warcraft 3 did the rest.

So any new MMORPG must at the very least meet these requirements.

GW is an mmo where you click in front of a character, that is 1999-ish and it doesn't have open seamless worlds you can fly over.

So they decided to redo things obviously.

SOME people indeed opened eyes after the AoC and Borehammer launches.

I am glad because perhaps we then can have REAL choices instead of Wow and EVE.

Iokthemonkey said on 6:47AM 2-16-2009

GW is an mmo where you click in front of a character, that is 1999-ish

---

I move my character with the keyboard. The only times I've found "click to move" in GW is when I attack an enemy, which is a feature you can switch on in WoW, too. So is WoW "1999-ish?"

And GW will never be a "seamless world." It's designed from a gameplay and technical point of view to play in instances. Predominantly this is to allow for stronger storytelling in the "story missions" but also - from a technical point of view - helps with bandwidth (hence the reason GW is free to play.)

Whether that's right or wrong is down to personal taste, but it's akin to complaining that WoW isn't a reflex/skill-based shoot'em up, ergo it's flawed.