City Of Heroes and Lineage MMO publisher NCsoft saw third quarter profits fall by exactly 50 percent in its third quarter; overall revenues also declined, as the publisher had to fall back on sales of older titles, after Tabula Rasa failed to gian significant traction.
In the three months ending September 30th, the South Korean company’s profit was down from 10 billion won ($7.2m) in 2007 to just 5 billion ($3.6m) in this year’s third quarter.
Overall revenue was down by only 2 percent on the same period last year, though, falling from 81.2 billion won ($59.6m) to 78.3 billion won ($57.6m) for the quarter.
The disappointing results come in the same week that market pioneer and Ultima/Tabula Rasa creator Richard Garriott left the company after he returned from a space trip, commenting that the "unforgettable experience has sparked some new interests that I would like to devote my time and resources to."
Korea still continues to account for 59 percent of the company’s sales by region, with North America and Japan both on 13 percent, Europe on 6 percent, and Taiwan on 5 percent.
Lineage II remains the company’s most successful game in terms of revenues, generating 48 percent of all sales, with its predecessor still at 36 percent. City of Heroes/Villains accounted for 8 percent, Guild Wars 5 percent, and Tabula Rasa just 2 percent.
Your view of a MMO is valid with modern MMO games being released. But the original vision of a MMORPG aka. Ultima Online is far from today's WoW.
It is a skill based level system not a real level system. Every new character has the same ability to kill any other player. You would have 100 skills all with ranges of 0-100.
If Garriot would have stayed true to Ultima and not jumped on the WoW carebear style play band-wagon things would be different.
Another issue that is scary for companies is game saturation. How many games will the average player purchase and maintain interest in. I think if you sell your game used you are probably done with that system and/or games as well. The trend in game creation reflects national economic issues. Pretty soon governments will be putting together a bailout plan for the games industry! LOL
Seriously, not all people on the world has time to play a MMO...
It is a skill based level system not a real level system. Every new character has the same ability to kill any other player. You would have 100 skills all with ranges of 0-100.
If Garriot would have stayed true to Ultima and not jumped on the WoW carebear style play band-wagon things would be different.