The Korean developer and publisher NCSoft has disclosed its business figures for Q1 2019. The focus is on the MMORPGs Aion, Blade & Soul, and Guild Wars 2. How did they start the year?
How did the first months of 2019 go for NCSoft? Revenues for NCSoft declined for almost all of its games. The home market in Korea was particularly heavily affected.
In that quarter, approximately 302 billion Won were generated in Q4 2018. From January to March 2019, however, it was only about 259 billion Won this time. The decline compared to Q1 2018 is even larger.
Only the West, including Europe and America, remained stable, and only in the royalties, meaning the rented licenses, could NCSoft report an increase compared to the previous quarter.
Almost all of NCSoft’s games have suffered losses
This is how Aion is doing: Since Q1 2018, Aion’s numbers have almost continuously declined. With 12.3 billion Won from this quarter, it is in a poor state, but it was doing worse in mid-2017 with around 10 billion Won. The game was boosted by the Patch 6.0.
However, the revenues listed here refer to the Korean version of the game. In Europe, it is published by Gameforge, and the revenues fall under royalties. Recently, Aion has made headlines mainly due to server mergers.
This is how Blade & Soul is doing: Blade & Soul has also lost revenue compared to the previous year, where 2018 was already a weak year for the MMORPG.
The mood in the game is changing more and more, as there are increasing complaints about pay-to-win. The dungeon event that started in early April has worsened the mood even further. A glimmer of hope seems to be the update to Unreal Engine 4, which is due to come in 2019.
This is how Guild Wars 2 is doing: The first quarter of 2019 went well for the MMORPG from ArenaNet in terms of numbers. Alongside Lineage 2, it was the only game that could achieve a slight increase in revenues.
However, from the studio’s perspective, many things did not go as optimally as expected. Following orders from NCSoft, more than 100 employees were laid off.
According to their own statements, this has had no negative impact on development and the plans for Guild Wars 2. Instead, other projects of the company were canceled or cut back. Nonetheless, the episode coming in May has been delayed by about a month.
The mobile market is also struggling
The third quarter of 2017 brought a huge boom in the mobile market. With Lineage M and other mobile games, NCSoft made a strong leap in revenues. They alone reached around 550 billion Won. However, this trend is not continuing currently.
How are the mobile games doing? Revenues have fallen to the lowest value since the release of Lineage M, and this is despite a new game entering the market in January, Aion: Legion of War.
In November 2018, NCSoft announced that they would not focus on mobile games for 2019 but would rather develop MMORPGs for PC and PS4 again.
If none of NCSoft’s games convince you, you can look forward to these 13 new MMORPGs:
