Sony Interactive Entertainment and NCSoft have announced a new “strategic partnership” that will cover “various global business fields, including mobile”.
CEOs Jim Ryan of SIE, who is retiring in 2024, and Taekjin Kim of NCSoft announced the deal in a joint press release. There were no specific projects announced with the deal, nor what types of games these two companies might team up on, but the two companies seem to be looking towards a longer-lasting partnership that will include a number of projects.
In the release, Kim says “This partnership with SIE is the beginning of our efforts to build various synergies together, utilizing both companies’ core competencies, technological capabilities, and expertise. We will deliver a new and enjoyable experience to our audience across and beyond genres and regions.”
One area that we can speculate on with this deal have to do with previous rumors that Sony and NCSoft have partnered to create a MMORPG set in Guerrilla Games’ Horizon universe. That speculation originated from the Korean press about a year ago, and at that time, NCSoft was reportedly hiring for something codenamed “Project H”.
Guerrilla Games has stated that they were looking for ways to add multiplayer to their Horizon games, but when it came to Horizon: Zero Dawn, it was scrapped in production and being saved for a different, future project.
Those rumors came together just over a year ago and things have been quiet since, but with this announcement of a wide-ranging deal between NCSoft, home of Lineage, Guild Wars 2, Blade & Soul, and the upcoming Throne and Liberty, and Sony Interactive Entertainment, let the speculation begin once more.