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NCsoft reports profits of $40 million in Q3

Korean publisher NCsoft announced in their latest financial results that the company made revenues of $142 million in the third quarter, with profits of $40 million.

This is an increase of a staggering 835% compared to last year, mainly fueled by MMO Aion — one of the few big MMO releases this yea — which was pre-ordered over 400,000 times, the publisher revealed, and proudly added that sales numbers top 500,000 copies in North America, and 470,000 copies in Europe.

Dragon Runners shutting down on Jan 1st, 2010

If you currently play NCsoft’s Dragon Runners you better start looking for alternatives as it was recently made known that the online serviers for the free-to-play game will be shutting down on January 1st, 2010.

News comes to us from the game’s lead programmer, Stephen Nichols, who said the following:

Dungeon Runners just isn’t cutting the mustard. If she were a ship, she’d be taking on water… The game just isn’t profitable.

However, according to Eurogamer, NCsoft will be giving Dungeon Runners players ‘free game time and copies of City of Heroes and Guild Wars Prophercies‘.

Aion Collector’s Edition revealed

NCsoft’s upcoming MMO Aion (they make a lot of MMOs, in case you didn’t notice), will be getting a collector’s edition, like many other NCsoft MMO titles.

The Aion Collector’s Edition will include a figurine (pictured above) and the game’s soundtrack as well. Oh, and it’ll also come in a great looking box (also picture above), for $70. Pre-ordering the set will give players exclusive in-game items as well.

NCsoft sees huge Q1 profit jumps

Korean MMO developer/publisher NCsoft has seen a massive increase in Q1 profits compared to last year; an increase of 315% compared to 2008, or over $105 million.

The results are fueled by the new release of MMO Aion: Tower of Eternity in Korea, which was an instant success. Other titles in NCsoft’s lineup saw an increase in revenue and contributed to the positive financial results, besides Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa, which was taken offline lsat February.

City of Heroes/Villains Celebrating Fifth Birthday

Seeing as how the game has reached its fifth year of operations, NCSoft has reactivated all expired retail and trial City of Heroes and City of Villains accounts for free until 11.59pm EST Sunday to celebrate the occasion.

Those who retired from the games will have five days to wreak havoc/save the day in Paragon City and check out what they’ve missed out on since they left.

Additionally, NCSoft promises lots of festivities and special events, including in-game commemorative badges for all players.

NCSoft Gets Steamed

Steam’s catalog keeps on expanding, as MMOG publisher NCSoft has announced that its various titles will soon hit Valve’s digital distribution platform.

Already available are City of Heroes, Guild Wars and Lineage, with Aion due out this fall.

"NCsoft is a clear leader in the MMO industry, and we believe our player community will be very excited to have access to the diverse catalog NCsoft has to offer our members," said Valve business development director Jason Holtman.

To celebrate the occasion, they will be running “special offers” for NCSoft’s games in the coming weeks.

NCsoft releases information on upcoming Lineage II expansion

NCsoft has recently made public a whole slew of information regarding an upcoming expansion for their popular MMORPG Lineage II.

Entitled Gracia Final, this free expansion will include an entire new continent for players to explore. But that’s not all as NCsoft is also adding the ability for players to use new aerial transformation skills such as Aurabird Falcon, Aurabird Owl which will allow players to view Gracia fro an all new angle.

Gracia Final will expand the game’s Olympiad tournament to allow for 3 vs 3 matches along with a new arena that allows players to duke it out against random opponents. Also included is a new PVP mode pitting players against eachother in capture the flag inspired games.

Kotaku is also reporting that the expansion is playable now in a beta form on the game’s public test servers which you can get by swinging by FilePlanet, here.

Worlds.com to sue NCSoft, Blizzard, other MMO devs

It seems that Worlds.com CEO Tom Kidrin has a bone to pick with MMO developers like NCSoft (Guild Wars) and Blizzard (World of Warcraft).

Kidrin has stated that he is suing NCSoft, claiming he holds the patent to creating “virtual worlds”. And, if successful, he will go on to prosecute Blizzard over their World of Warcraft MMO.

But how did a before unknown company, such as Worlds.com, acquire such a hefty patent? Well, Kindrin says that the patent originally started with Starbright World, an MMOesque virtual world designed for severly ill children looking for an escape.

If this guys is successful with NCSoft, he potentially has the ability to sue just about every MMO developer out there. Uh oh.

Read (INCGamers)

Guild Wars 2 delayed

Those anticipating the release of Guild Wars 2, are in for some bad news. Apparently, during an investor finance briefing, NCsoft was quoted to have said that Guild Wars 2 won’t be out until 2010-2011. Bummer.

Joystiq notes that although the developer had to cut some staff and won’t be showing up at E3 this year, their game Aion sold remarkably well in Korea which leads us to believe that financial woes did not cause this delay.

Worlds.com Suing NCsoft

That’s right gaming fans, we’ve got yet another patent infringement lawsuit on our hands. Worlds.com, a company that focuses on creating ‘3D communities’ has filed a lawsuit against NCsoft, the company behind Tabula Rasa, Guild Wars, Lineage and City of Heroes. They’re claiming that the company violated a patent awarded to Worlds.com in February of 2007. If they win the case it’s going to be a big deal; the patent applies to what can only be described as the most basic underlying concept of every MMOs.

The patent is for technology that allows users to “interact with other users in a virtual space” through a server, with an avatar representing each user. As you can imagine, that concept applies to pretty much every MMO in existence. Worlds.com is seeking ‘damages’ and a ‘permanent injunction’ against violations of the patent, although any company they won a lawsuit against would likely find that Worlds.com is willing to negotiate, especially if they managed to win against powerhouses like Blizzard. NCsoft is likely their first target as they are not a US based company and likely have less lawyers on their payroll familiar with patent law and less money than Blizzard and Sony.

Tabula Rasa Shutting Down, Employees to be Laid Off

Designed by industry pioneer and space tourist Richard Garriott, Tabula Rasa will shut down on February 28, 2009. This was announced on the game’s website, which noted that the title “hasn’t performed as expected.”

“The development team has worked hard to improve the game since launch, but the game never achieved the player population we hoped for,” reads a post on the website.

It was added that the game will become free to play starting January 10, 2009 before its closure the following month.

Additionally, NCSoft will lay off an undisclosed number of employees following the closure. The company plans on rewarding loyal gamers, though, by giving them free game time to its other MMOs including City of Heroes, Lineage II and the forthcoming Aion.

NC West Formed

NCsoft today announced the formation of NC West, a wholly-owned subsidiary focused on western regions including US and Europe. The new companies focus is to become the “world’s premier western publisher of MMOs,” their statement reads.

NC West will be headquartered in Seattle, WA and will unify existing subsidiaries NC Interactive, NC Europe, NC Austin and ArenaNet, with ArenaNet co-founder Jeff Strain serving as the new company’s president of product development.

No specific plans were revealed, though Chris Chung, CEO of NC West, hoped that by combining the strength of their US and European teams they will be able to create “blockbuster MMO franchises.”

NCSoft Cuts Jobs from Austin Studio

Austin-based developers are in for a rough month, as NCSoft has let go of 21 employees from its Austin, Texas development studio. This move comes right after Midway revealed that it has cut a major portion of its workforce at its Austin studio.

The company explained that the layoffs were related to positions focused on unannounced and prototype products. “We are announcing that 21 positions are being eliminated in the Austin office of NCsoft in the area of product development,” a company spokesperson said. “Primarily this is related to products which we have not previously announced and were in prototype phases.”

They have also cut some positions from the Dungeon Runners team, having decided not to port it to other platforms at the time. NCSoft has not been doing well recently as their operating profit took a sharp 60% fall this year.