'Blade & Soul' boosts NCSOFT profits overseas
By Yoon Sung-won
Kim Taek-jin NCSOFT CEO
NCSOFT said Friday it posted 75.78 billion won in operating profit in the first quarter, a jump of 68.9 percent from a year ago.
The gaming company said its profit growth is largely attributable to the popularity of its MMORPG “Blade & Soul,” especially in the overseas markets.
Led by CEO Kim Taek-jin, NCSOFT said it will seek new income sources by introducing new mobile and computer online titles this year.
“We are smoothly proceeding with test and introduction schedules for new games based on solid growth of our sales of existing game intellectual properties,” NCSOFT Chief Financial Officer Yoon Jae-soo said during a Friday press conference. “This year will be the time to push for new growth momentum as we will roll out new mobile and computer online games.”
According to its regulatory filing on Friday, NCSOFT said it recorded 240.85 billion won in sales, up 28 percent year-on-year, and its net profit reached 66.24 billion won, up 86 percent in the same period.
In the first quarter of last year, the company recorded 188.1 billion won in sales, 44.9 billion won in operating profit and 35.6 billion won in net profit.
NCSOFT stressed that its major computer online game titles such as “Lineage,” “AION” and “Blade & Soul” have led the quarter’s profit growth. In particular, “Blade & Soul,” which was rolled out in the North American and European markets in the first quarter, alone generated 54 billion won in sales, up 10.2 percent year-on-year. This is the greatest quarterly achievement for the title, it said.
“Blade & Soul” also contributed to the company’s performance not only in direct sales but also through royalty gains, as it recorded 29.4 billion won in royalty sales on the back of the strong performance of the game and its mobile-version casual title “Blade & Soul Mobile” in the Chinese market. The company provides the mobile game through Chinese publisher Tencent.
“We consider that the sales performance of Blade & Soul is steady in the North American and European markets,” Yoon said. “We are also planning to roll out our game intellectual properties in more diverse global markets and we will release Blade & Soul in Russia this month.”
“Lineage,” one of the company’s oldest titles, has recorded 78.9 billion won in sales, followed by “Guild Wars 2” with 30.6 billion won and “AION” with 20.1 billion won.
Besides the 131.5 billion won sales generated in the Korean market, NCSOFT has raked in a total of 109.3 billion won in overseas sales, including 60.8 billion won from the North American and European markets. This was 45 percent of the company’s total quarterly sales.