Auto Assault Drags NCsoft's 2nd Quarter into the Red

[Graham Templeton]

Auto Assault Drags NCsoft's 2nd Quarter into the Red

NCsoft today announced [http://www.ncsoft.com/eng/NCPress/View.asp?hSeq=1] their second quarter financial results, posting a slight loss. This comes in spite of the success of the new Guild Wars: Factions expansion pack, and the continued success of both Lineage and Lineage 2, in Korea. From the press release:

"Sales were boosted by the successful launch of Guild Wars Factions?, which added to the already stable sales base formed by Lineage® and Lineage II... However, operating income saw a downturn due to the one time write-off (approximately KRW 12.6 billion or US$13.1 million) of costs related to sluggish sales of Auto Assault®, released in North America and Europe during the second quarter."

This news seems unsurprising, given the recent news surrounding Auto Assault. Numerous unofficial reports, as well as simple observation by active players, indicate that the game is sparsely populated. Just weeks ago, developer NetDevil announced [http://eu.autoassault.com/news/article/welcome_to_nexus/] that their two servers, hosting US and European players respectively, had merged into a single global server. This move could be an indication that neither server had an individually sustainable population. Rumors of the game's population have hovered around the 10,000 mark, but an NCsoft spokesperson denied this. "Like all the numbers that have been reported on certain blog and rumor sites, Auto Assault?s rumored subscriber numbers are incorrect - and low"

NCsoft has also denied [http://blogs.rockymountainnews.com/denver/freePlay/2006/06/ncsoft_evaluating_auto_assault.html] that recent large-scale layoffs are a direct result of Auto Assault's poor performance.

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