In the fantasy MMORPG Guild Wars 2, the expansion “Heart of Thorns” seems to be underwhelming. Fewer games were sold than expected.
This week, NCSoft released its business figures. While the 4th quarter of 2015 saw a decent increase in revenue for Guild Wars 2, the numbers fell short of the expectations of Korean publisher NCSoft, although this was not communicated explicitly.
During the conference call, which was only available verbally, an analyst asked: The sales for GW2 seem to be rather weak; what is the reason for that?
NCSoft did not dispute the claim that sales were weak and stated that they see the problem in the transition from the regular “Free2Play” contents to the “Paid” expansion Heart of Thorns. Not as many players made the switch as expected.
Compared to the number of players, the amount of money spent in the shop is “still okay.” However, the sales of the paid expansion are a problem.
They plan two strategies. First, they want to create more incentives for players to acquire Heart of Thorns, possibly through events or new systems. They are investigating: What prevents purchases, and what can we eliminate?
On the other hand, they want to take another close look at the expansion: What was actually available at the launch of Heart of Thorns, and what were the user expectations? They see a gap there and want to address it, fulfilling these expectations with faster updates.
- Already in our MMO trends, we noticed that the expansion “Heart of Thorns” did not significantly impact playtime as one would expect from a “hit”.
- A Korean investment firm had already issued a forecast for GW2 in January predicting that revenues would be weaker than expected. Nevertheless, the forecast numbers were significantly higher than the actual figures in the financial report.
So one can probably say: Something did not go as expected with Heart of Thorns.
