GamesIndustry.biz is reporting that NCsoft saw a 50% drop in their net income, based on 3rd quarter financial results released by the game publisher.

MMO publisher NCsoft has revealed results for the third quarter of the financial year, ended September 30, reporting a 50 per cent drop in net income year-on-year.

The Korean publisher put its net income at KRW 5 billion (USD 3 million) down from KRW 6.6 billion (USD 4.8 million) the previous quarter and significantly down from KRW 10 billion (USD 7 million) for the same period last year.

The poor result is reflected in the company's operating income, which also fell almost 50 per cent, from KRW 7.9 billion (USD 5.8 million) to KRW 4.5 billion (USD 3.3 million). The company experienced an overall sales decline to KR 78,270,000,000.00 (USD 57.6 million) from KR 81,201,000,000.00 (USD 59.6 million).

Read more here.

Aion will save them.

It's the first game in a very long time I have been excited about and this goes for almost everyone else who has seen or tried it. So polished, so beautiful and the flow of the game is very impressive.

Also that the style isn't all asian in the looks is a huge plus in my book.

thats a pretty big lose tho. i hope aion can save them

Lol, aion will turn them instantly into a blizzard company from all the $ they shall be making. :-O

  They were already a Blizzard type company with their Lineage franchise. Aion is probably going to drag them underwater and drown them :P

It will drag them up the surface, and onto a new land, a new era! ... of wealth, XD. :]

They ignored guaranteed bestseller franchise (Lineage 3) to make completely pointless no-name games that came back biting them.

Originally posted by kishe

They ignored guaranteed bestseller franchise (Lineage 3) to make completely pointless no-name games that came back biting them.

You make a pretty big assumption in thinking the name means everything in an MMO. There was little reason to release "lineage3" when Lineage2 still had a huge following. A company has to take chances to make money, and  most of the time they end up losing more then gaining. Not every company can be like Blizzard and live off of one franchise for over 10 years.

If name meant everything, Everquest II would be stronger than WoW. And Richard Garriotts Tabula Rasa would've been their new hit...

Name may be a good starter, but it's a poor sticker. People will join a game for its name. They won't necessarily stay for long when there ain't no good game behind it.

I wish we knew more like is this a developement cycle thats dragging them down or a week  currency , or loss of sales only?

as with any business there can be several factors that can explain but reporters just go for the one big line.

Originally posted by Sinent

I wish we knew more like is this a developement cycle thats dragging them down or a week  currency , or loss of sales only?

as with any business there can be several factors that can explain but reporters just go for the one big line.

A company's image can drag them down.

Take Tabula rasa for example. I was so dissapointed in that game that I will likely not try Aion unless it's F2P or hits 1 mil subs.

And lets face it L2 isn't going very strong. CoH/CoV is aging.

With all the money they are spending on Aion/STO........If Aion tanks we can pertty much rest assured that STO will tank as well due to lack of funding.

Now that they wised up and threw the Garriott brothers out the airlock, they might have a chance.

This is also in partly factored that they took down all of the NCSoft Americas RF online servers, which was still making a good marginal through item malls. The developers of RFonline kind of sliced NCsofts wrists by not letting them renew the contract. Kind of like letting somebody slowly fall off a cliff instread of grabbing them.

They are not relying just on aion, but also the upcoming GW2 to help them out. I am sure they will get out of the slump in no time once they release.

Originally posted by kishe

They ignored guaranteed bestseller franchise (Lineage 3) to make completely pointless no-name games that came back biting them.

i'm grateful to anyone who's experienced success that can continue to explore new ideas instead of milking the popularity of something in history. reinvention is of course inevitable, but no one but investors should be upset about someone straying from the capitolistic mechanics of making money for more money's sake.

Originally posted by Sinent

I wish we knew more like is this a developement cycle thats dragging them down or a week  currency , or loss of sales only?

as with any business there can be several factors that can explain but reporters just go for the one big line.

Well, just check their quarterly report. They are a publicly traded company. There are no secrets (or "shouldn't be" in a publicly traded company.

Aion will fix this, they are also unveiling Lineage 3 in 2009.

It is the "what have you done for me lately" effect.  Seems only Blizzard is immune to such.

Why you guys have to always name Blizzard for such a news.. Blizz has history with other genres, they didn't got profit just because of WoW. And what does NCsoft have? Only mmorpg's.

In other words Aion will fix this as soon as it comes to US/EU... Aion already broke the charts with beta testers yesterday.

You do realize that NCsoft didn't have anything at all to do with RF online, in America or otherwise, right? That was CCR in Asia and Codemasters in NA/EU :P

I think it partially is effected by the fact they are developing several games at the moment, two of which will probaby be big (Aion which is currently setting open beta records in Korea and GW2) , as well as issues they have been having with Tabula Rasa (putting in a lot of money for updates but lacking in the subscriptions department). I think Aions release will help bring them back in the positive profits and earnings wise.

Originally posted by grndzro

Originally posted by Sinent

I wish we knew more like is this a developement cycle thats dragging them down or a week  currency , or loss of sales only?

as with any business there can be several factors that can explain but reporters just go for the one big line.

 

A company's image can drag them down.

Take Tabula rasa for example. I was so dissapointed in that game that I will likely not try Aion unless it's F2P or hits 1 mil subs.

And lets face it L2 isn't going very strong. CoH/CoV is aging.

With all the money they are spending on Aion/STO........If Aion tanks we can pertty much rest assured that STO will tank as well due to lack of funding.

"I will likely not try Aion unless it's F2P or hits 1 mil subs"

What in the world does it matter if it has 1 mil subs or not? You jump on many bandwagons? Since you base how much you like a game by the number of subs it has, I pity you.  Personally I hope it doesnt get to be the size of WOW or even close to it just for the simple fact that I dont want to have to put up with a WoW type community.

If you looked at any new info on Aion you would see that its doing very good in open beta. last stats I saw they were adding severs due to the unexpected influx of people. Around 150k and the majority of that is in korea alone. I have been trying to see if I can find anything majorly wrong with Aion I have not ran across any info that there is any game breaking bugs. Just think It still has 4 months of so to get all the little launch bugs out of the way before they launch it here in NA/EU countries. IMO no MMO should ever launch first in the US or EU countries, just because the majority of the MMO community here crys to much about launch bugs. These kids think that an MMO should launch to compete with WoW right off the bat, thats not reality. WoW has been out for a long time. You have to grow with a new MMO. But things like AoC went to far.

 This isn't terribly surprising. TR tanked and Auto Assault was a total write off. They've been spending a lot of money and haven't really been getting anywhere with it recently. 

Aion looks amazing so far im really looking forward to trying it out ...

here's a link to some nice vids of it

http://www.aiononline.com/us/media/video/video.html

Originally posted by toddze

Originally posted by grndzro

Originally posted by Sinent

I wish we knew more like is this a developement cycle thats dragging them down or a week  currency , or loss of sales only?

as with any business there can be several factors that can explain but reporters just go for the one big line.

 

A company's image can drag them down.

Take Tabula rasa for example. I was so dissapointed in that game that I will likely not try Aion unless it's F2P or hits 1 mil subs.

And lets face it L2 isn't going very strong. CoH/CoV is aging.

With all the money they are spending on Aion/STO........If Aion tanks we can pertty much rest assured that STO will tank as well due to lack of funding.

 

"I will likely not try Aion unless it's F2P or hits 1 mil subs"

What in the world does it matter if it has 1 mil subs or not? You jump on many bandwagons? Since you base how much you like a game by the number of subs it has, I pity you.  Personally I hope it doesnt get to be the size of WOW or even close to it just for the simple fact that I dont want to have to put up with a WoW type community.

If you looked at any new info on Aion you would see that its doing very good in open beta. last stats I saw they were adding severs due to the unexpected influx of people. Around 150k and the majority of that is in korea alone. I have been trying to see if I can find anything majorly wrong with Aion I have not ran across any info that there is any game breaking bugs. Just think It still has 4 months of so to get all the little launch bugs out of the way before they launch it here in NA/EU countries. IMO no MMO should ever launch first in the US or EU countries, just because the majority of the MMO community here crys to much about launch bugs. These kids think that an MMO should launch to compete with WoW right off the bat, thats not reality. WoW has been out for a long time. You have to grow with a new MMO. But things like AoC went to far.

If a game only has 150k beta testers in open beta IN KOREA then it's in trouble lol.  Aion is a pretty shallow game that tries to rise above the fold with shiney graphics and FLYING, ooooo.  It doesn't really offer more than many f2p games out there so I don't think it will ever be a big hit like Lineage 1 or 2. 

   Name recognition means alot, as long as the game follow in the steps of its predecessors.  That is why Lineage 2 was a huge hit, and why EQ 2 wasn't (it did pretty well though still).  If Richard Garriot made a UO  type of game it would have been huge. Instead he made a generic sci fi game that was highly instanced and offered nothing to the old skewl uo pvp crowd. 

   Aionis eye candy and nothing more, I expect it will be the final nail in the coffin for NCSoft.

Yeah I tend to agree with a few things.

First NCSoft has spent the last 5 or so years spinning its wheels trying to achieve a large success in the western market and neglecting its bread and butter, Korea. (see their quarterly report US/EU making up less then 20% of NCSoft sales revenues)

ncsoft.net/global/ir/quarterly.aspx

NC didn't react fast enough to the threat of WoW style gameplay. They only just recently removed the grind from L2, three years to late IMHO. L2 could have stayed competetive against WoW in Asia if they had modified gameplay a little sooner.

Ol' Rich got them twisted up in a several projects that frankly were nothing but big fat failures burning up 10's of millions of dollars.

They lost focus on Lineage 3, a game their fans are pretty much demanding. NC soft was built on the Lineage fanchise, why they strayed away from it...a mystery.

NC has been spending a large amount of money on new games in developement. (which this article doesn't mention) None of them primarily targeted at the western market. Aion and Blade and Soul are two.

As a result, they have to many irons in the fire. They are trying to savage a sinking ship (the US / EU market) They are currently making 3 MMO's, they are still in full developement of L2 content. Arena net is currently working on GW2.

Aion is going to do really well in its target market, Korea.

www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2008/11/133_34283.html

The company, however, is optimistic about the future with its latest fantasy game, ``Aion,'' creating a roaring buzz after entering open beta testing Tuesday.

NCsoft started off with 18 servers, each capable of supporting 5,000 users, but had to increase the servers to 25 with gamers flocking to have a try.

Although the company hasn't announced an official launch date, commercial services are likely to start in early December.

Just my thoughts....

Originally posted by Torak

Yeah I tend to agree with a few things.

First NCSoft has spent the last 5 or so years spinning its wheels trying to achieve a large success in the western market and neglecting its bread and butter, Korea. (see their quarterly report US/EU making up less then 20% of NCSoft sales revenues)

ncsoft.net/global/ir/quarterly.aspx

NC didn't react fast enough to the threat of WoW style gameplay. They only just recently removed the grind from L2, three years to late IMHO. L2 could have stayed competetive against WoW in Asia if they had modified gameplay a little sooner.

Ol' Rich got them twisted up in a several projects that frankly were nothing but big fat failures burning up 10's of millions of dollars.

They lost focus on Lineage 3, a game their fans are pretty much demanding. NC soft was built on the Lineage fanchise, why they strayed away from it...a mystery.

NC has been spending a large amount of money on new games in developement. (which this article doesn't mention) None of them primarily targeted at the western market. Aion and Blade and Soul are two.

As a result, they have to many irons in the fire. They are trying to savage a sinking ship (the US / EU market) They are currently making 3 MMO's, they are still in full developement of L2 content. Arena net is currently working on GW2.

Aion is going to do really well in its target market, Korea.

www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2008/11/133_34283.html

The company, however, is optimistic about the future with its latest fantasy game, ``Aion,'' creating a roaring buzz after entering open beta testing Tuesday.

NCsoft started off with 18 servers, each capable of supporting 5,000 users, but had to increase the servers to 25 with gamers flocking to have a try.

Although the company hasn't announced an official launch date, commercial services are likely to start in early December.

 

Just my thoughts....

 

 

I just wish Aion would release so Anet can give out some information on GuildWars2. Right now GW2 is the only game in development capable of keeping me interested in the genre. If GW2 fails then it's off to FPSs I go.