NCSoft has released its report for the 3rd quarter of 2020. It includes the revenue figures for various games. Besides strong mobile titles, it is noticeable that especially Guild Wars 2 has seen significant growth. However, the outlook for other MMORPGs in the West is less favorable.
What do the numbers say? The Korean company has published the revenue figures for the months of July, August, and September. Generally, the company performed well. There is a slight upward trend compared to the previous quarter, which is primarily attributed to Lineage Mobile and Lineage 2M.
Surprisingly, the Western MMORPG Guild Wars 2 has also seen good gains. The third quarter was rather weak. With the new Fractal Sunqua Peak, there was only one major update.
Overall, the 3rd quarter of 2020 looks significantly better than the same quarter last year.
Guild Wars 2 Grows, Blade and Soul Is Weakening More and More
What is the situation with the various MMORPGs in the West?
- Guild Wars 2 has been able to grow significantly. Revenue rose from 15.64 billion won (11.93 million euros) to 18.818 billion won (14.36 million euros). The MMORPG is performing as well as it last did in mid-2018. This can likely be explained mainly by some 50% sales of the MMORPG, a major birthday sale in the in-game shop in August, and the announcement of the 3rd expansion “End of Dragons”.
- Blade & Soul, on the other hand, has lost significantly compared to the previous quarter. Although a new class was introduced, overall there has been too little happening. This is also evident from the fact that the engine update is still not available.
- AION has stabilized somewhat but had its weakest quarter since release in Q2. Classic servers are currently being launched in Korea. However, in the West, there have been discussions about an auto-play feature.
What does NCSoft benefit from the most? The numbers and statistics indicate that especially the mobile games Lineage M and Lineage 2M make up the lion’s share of the revenue. Almost 300 million of the 446 million euros come from mobile games.
However, the older titles Lineage 1 and Lineage 2 have also seen slight gains.
What does the future hold? For 2021, NCSoft has already announced 3 new MMORPGs. Among them is the highly anticipated game Project TL, which, according to previous descriptions, is said to resemble Lost Ark or a Diablo MMORPG in gameplay.
For Guild Wars 2, there are plans in addition to the expansion. A roadmap with 4 major updates for the upcoming 7 months has been published. However, the Steam release originally planned for November has been postponed for now.
It could have possibly boosted the numbers even further, just as it did for Star Wars: The Old Republic this year. The MMORPG noticeably benefited from the release on Steam in terms of player numbers:
