During the financial report for the 1st quarter of 2024, NCSOFT shared plans for the release of its new projects. In 2025, the global release of three expensive projects is expected: MMORPG AION 2, shooter LLL and strategy Project G. Interestingly, CEO Park Byung-moo said that the monetization model for new projects will be different from what players are used to seeing in the company’s mobile projects. and will be closer to what we saw in the MMORPG Throne and Liberty.
In 2024, it plans to release several of its games in new regions. Among them: Lineage 2M in Southeast Asia, Blade & Soul 2 in China, Throne and Liberty in the global market. The multiplayer action game Battle Crush and the collection game Project BSS, which is a prequel to the events of the MMORPG Blade & Soul, are being prepared for release in 2024.
According to the CEO, the process of developing ArenaNet is currently ongoing, since this studio is considered as the most promising outside of South Korea, and there are big bets on it.
They plan to turn the Purple platform into a full-fledged international platform on which 2-3 AAA games will be released per year. Moreover, we are talking not only about NCSOFT’s own projects, but also about international partners. As part of this, it is planned to make a series of investments to acquire several companies. Details have not been provided as negotiations have not yet ended.
On the financial side, overall sales decreased both compared to the 4th quarter of 2023 and the same period in 2023. And net profit, although inferior to the 1st quarter of 2023, almost doubled the values of the 4th quarter of 2023.
As before, management is openly saying that achieving strong sales growth in 2024 will be difficult, and significant growth is not expected until 2025. To maintain the share price, it is planned to repurchase its own shares in the amount of 100 billion won, and part of the acquired shares will be used in mergers and acquisitions in interested studios.
