14 DAY TRIAL // NCsoft, the MMO-oriented developer and publisher based in South Korea, has announced that it has registered an increase in profits of about 450% mainly because of the Asian release of its newest videogame, called Aion, which is set to also arrive in the West shortly. The sales of the company also rose, by 70%, to 110.96 million dollars, with profits coming in at 27.12 million.
Currently, Aion is running on 225 servers located in South Korea, China, Japan and Taiwan. The game has seen a strong start and NCsoft has big hopes for it once it arrives in Europe and in North America.
Jaeho Lee, who is the Chief Financial Officer of NCsoft, said that “I believe the performance of Aion in the US and European markets will be very successful.[...] We are guessing that Aion will be - could be - the second successful MMO in the US market next to World of Warcraft.” The game will be officially released in the United States on September 22 and in Europe three short days later.
At the moment, NCsoft is also operating the MMO Guild Wars, which has a stable, if not very large player base, and Champions Online, which it has taken over from Cryptic.
Recently, the company also put out Tabula Rasa, another high profile MMO that performed very strongly on its debut but then faltered rather quickly and was forced to shut down because of a declining player base. It was designed by gaming legend Richard Garriott, who promoted it on his trip to the International Space Station and who is now suing NCsoft for 27 million dollars.
NCsoft has admitted that Tabula Rasa is a blemish on its reputation but expressed hope that retailers will not be taking the performance of that game into account when ordering and promoting Aion.