NCsoft Q1 2008 Financial Results Announced

You have to pay monthly fees for Both Lineage games btw, that might explain why it yields such high revenue

No, that was in response to your speculation that the release of new GW2 details may provide a bump in sales. The remainder of the response was merely my own speculation as to why that may not be a safe bet.

This is always a possibility, yes. Hence my distaste for economic data in general. Just think, the sort of speculation we're currently engaging in (albeit it in a relatively more sophisticated way with much more data) is what drives the largest economies on the world! o_0

No, but that's where the sales percentages come in. Lineage II's income stream is huge compared to Guild Wars. While it's certainly possible that Lineage II costs substantially more to run than it's bringing in (or it's very close to break-even), that seems fairly unlikely. You can even look to other pay-to-play games like WoW for evidence of that. The profit margin on that game, even with the free content updates that are provided, is ENORMOUS.

Um wait a sec...am I reading this right? Are you telling me WoW's profits are more than all of NCsofts combined? Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about...

That's probably true. Blizzard made over $1bn last year, most of which was likely from WoW. I wouldn't be surprised if WoW generates 2 or 3 times as much revenue as all of NCSoft's offerings.

Did I mentiont their secure website (account management area) is so slow, it is actually resetting the connection and failing to load? Wow, talk about terrible.

If you think about it, City of Heroes/Villains is a standard MMORPG where you buy it at the store and then pay a monthly fee to play it. Guild Wars, on the other hand, only makes money if people buy the game, the "real world" fan merchandise, or online game upgrades (like character slots or PvP packs).

Guild Wars is still making money than City of Heroes/Villians, and I think that says quite a bit. I think that it's pretty amazing when a free online game is making more money than one that is charging every single user a monthly fee to play it. Keep in mind also that GW is super-cheap in the stores, with each chapter going for $17-30.

not a single word about Tabula Rasa...

blizzard's revenues are closer to 10x ncsoft's revenues

Blizzard owns both world of warcraft AND Starcraft, which is even bigger than WoW in japan and surrounding countries.

And even though the Diablo series is a bit outdated, I can still see chunks of people still buying it as well as the Diablo Chest.

They have 3 renowned titles under their belts.

I'm betting NCSoft wants to say as little as possible about that money pit.

That's true, but you only buy Starcraft for $30 once, not $18 every single month.

Well I think the numbers for NCsoft published games are just average. Keep in mind that NCsoft cut back on marketing and other expenses just to make a profit out of the quarter which really isn't that great. Though I suspect they are assuming sales will be much greater once Aion and Guild Wars 2 hits the shelves whenever they decide to do so.

I thought CoH/CoV died.

i really dont see why NCsoft wont bring games like, dragonica, punch monster, point blank, and smash star, to the united states of america and or canada i bet by doing so there profits will increase tenfold!!!
this is my biggest question i know it will cost them a couple bucks to bring them to the u.s but with the right promotions those games can be pretty successful in america for example dragonica can steal many players from maplestory.

For comparison:

Q2 2007: 8.3 billion KRW
Q3 2007: 13 billion KRW (Eye of the North release)
Q4 2007: 9.2 billion KRW
Q1 2008: 9.5 billion KRW

Sales numbers only, not profit.

Q2 2007 was 1 year since Nightfall's release, with customers eagerly anticipating a soon to come expansion.

I suspect in Q2 2008, 1 year since Eye of the North with no more expansions and no news of GW2, sales will go below the 8 million KRW mark.

Unless they continue cutting advertising and "other variable sales costs"; can anyone say Support team?

Thats a pretty good sustainable income, considering Guild Wars doesn't have a monthly fee. That means a great many people are buying new campaigns, despite the thousands of QQ'ers you see here, and they were able to cut advertising at the same time. The game should do fine as long as GW2 isn't a total downer.

Doesn't change the fact that before the Sims and WoW, Starcraft was the number one selling computer video game ever.
Blizzard makes godly money. It really shouldn't be a surprise. It's like comparing A&W Root Beer sales to the entire Coca-Cola franchise. Of course they are going to have disparaging results. But that doesn't mean anything about the quality of the product (so stop the oh so subtle trolling, profits don't have anything to do with the quality of the games)

Well gaming is now, apparently (at least according to the GDC) the largest media industry out there

beating both box office and the music industry by a mile