Lineage pushes NCSoft net profit up 34 percent in Q3

Game company NCSoft saw its net profit grow 34 percent and operating profit jump 69 percent on year in the July-September period thanks to the strong performance of its steady-selling game title, Lineage.

The company generated 217.7 billion won ($196.6 million) in operating profit for the year’s third quarter and a net profit of 152.5 billion won, up 34 percent on year.

Quarterly revenue totaled 585.2 billion won, representing a 47-percent increase from the same period last year.

Revenue from mobile games alone was 389.6 billion won. Its massively multiplayer online role-playing game (Mmorpg) Lineage series was a big driver behind the third-quarter growth.

NCSoft’s mobile game Lineage M’s quarterly revenue rose 53 percent on year to 245.2 billion won thanks to a large-scale update. Lineage2 M, which launched in late November 2019, generated a revenue of 144.5 billion won. Both are currently among Korea’s top-selling mobile games.

Lineage’s PC version also saw its revenue jump 46 percent on year to 49.9 billion won.

By region, the Korean market generated 477.1 billion won in sales while the United States and Europe raised a combined 27.4 billion won. Revenue from Japan totaled 13.9 billion won.

In a Monday conference call, the company said it will shorten the interval between new releases next year. Compared to its competitors, NCSoft is known for being relatively slow in developing new games. That tendency is reflected in its business portfolio, with most of its revenue coming from just a few titles.

“In the past, we used to release new titles every five years, but in the mobile era, that gap has been narrowing down,” said Lee Jang-wook, NCSoft’s head of investor relations during the conference call.

“We’re preparing a lot of new titles at the moment under a plan to aggressively push business in the global market next year and the year after. Launch schedules will be tightened even more.”

NCSoft recently announced a partnership with KB Securities to establish a security firm that would make use of its artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

“We’ve operated the AI unit for a long time. Until now, that technology was used to develop an AI engine for games. But AI has a wide range of business opportunities and I believe our technology has potential to be used in realms other than games or finance,” said Lee.

BY SONG KYOUNG-SON [song.kyoungson@joongang.co.kr]