NCSoft Reports Q4 Earnings, Sales up 17% YoY, WildStar No Longer Mentioned
NCSoft reported their Q4, 2016 earnings report today and the company's headline number was good; sales increased 17% year over year. The company also broke down their sales by game franchise as they normally do, but one game was missing this time around: Wildstar.
It looks like whatever revenue Wildstar did have is now being clumped into "Other Sales" along with NCSoft's various mobile titles. The growth in "other sales" this quarter can be attributed to the successful launch of Lineage Red Knights. Prior to this quarter, NCSoft included a breakdown of Wildstar's revenue (which has been in decline for some time). I suspect NCSoft stopped reporting Wildstar's numbers as they were simply too low to take up a chart on their investor presentation (Wildstar did ~1.1B KRW last quarter, or ~$958,000). Total sales in 2016 for NCSoft was 983.5B KRW, or ~$856M USD)
Aside from Wildstar's absence, the quarter looks strong. Lineage, NCSoft's biggest game, saw a 41% jump in sales quarter over quarter while the rest of the franchises stayed relatively flat. Since Q4 wraps up the reporting year for NCSoft, the company also prepared a sales breakdown by franchise on a yearly basis:
Aion and Guild Wars 2 have been in slight decline lately but Lineage and Blade and Soul picked up the slack. The increase in Blade & Soul revenues can be attributed to the game's launch in North America and Europe in 2016. Net income (profit) at the company for the full year 2016 increased to 271B KRW from 166B KRW in 2015.
