NCSoft released their quarterly earnings report for the last quarter of 2008 today. The company’s sales and profits seem to be on the upswing, but the bad news is that according to the product lineup, we will not be getting Guild Wars 2 until 2010-2011. This makes sense for the company as a whole if they want to push Aion in the U.S. at the end of this year, even if ArenaNet is calling their own shots.
Things could of course change, especially with the leadership and corporate shakeup going on at NCSoft West, but Guild Wars 2 is very unlikely for 2009 with the little information we have. For some good Guild Wars news, it is pretty likely that they will have sold 6,000,000 units by the end of next quarter further solidifying the success of a great business model.
–Ravious
EDIT: After listening to the conference call it seems that the internal expectations of what Guild Wars 2 would be really took off during development. They did intend to make a ‘sequel’ at the start, but it has evolved in to ‘a whole new game.’
Not GW2, but I was a bit suprised that the US/Europe launch of Aion was timelined at Q4 2009, somehow I’d got the impression it would be earlier than that.
I have been hearing for some time that Guild Wars 2 is going to have something like 10 times the depth of content that Guild Wars had. And with the recent fizzled launches of Age of Conan and now War Hammer Online, ArenaNet is more concerned about polish than getting things out fast. I think pretty much last summer the decision was probably made that GW2 would not be out until 2010, given how much they were putting into it and how polished they wanted it to be at release.
Also, their recent profit losses have been attributed to marketing costs. Can you imagine the costs they’re going to sink into marketing Aion in NA, EU, Japan, and Taiwan? Now imagine them also fronting the cash to promote GW2 for a global release? That would be a huge cash drain and even more dismal financial reports in the future. :P
By that I mean, I simply don’t believe they can afford to market both games simultaneously in 2009.
This is ugly. And if they believe Aion will have any type of success here in the US, they would be terribly wrong.
They should have shoveled more cash into Arena.Net, and helped them get motivated and GW2 launched.
That will be the ONLY game to save them now.
Good thing Korea rocks for NCsoft.
Believe it or not, I was expecting this to happen. The main problem here is GW and the money it brings in every month. Why launch a new product when your current offering is already selling very well?
I started playing GW a month ago and was amazed by the game’s all round quality, especially when taking into consideration its age. If I get bothered, I can always buy the expansion packs which should keep me busy for many months to come.
Personaly, I couldn’t be bothered about Aion. Doesn’t sound that exiting so I won’t be buying it when it arrives here in Europe.
I hope they take the time to design away the annoyances of Guild Wars and end up with something much better.
Annoyances: Rails and invisible walls all over the place, character movement, excessive instancing, limited choice of visual appearance.
If they fix that I’d be a supremely happy camper, because Guild Wars is rather solid as it is. It’s those annoyances (IMO) that detract from it.
what about the beta? wont they release that somewhere in 09? Q4?
@julian: have you not heard anything about gw2? As far as I know, everything you mentioned will not be in gw2. A more persistent world, jumping, several races to choose from, etc.
Although its not like Anet is being particularly forthcoming about what they’ve got up their sleeve. When was the last time they released any real information?
bigwig, no I haven’t been keeping track, so what you say is definitely good news.
honestly even though Aion looks good and is promising i couldn’t care less about the game, darn it NCSoft all i care about right now is Guild Wars 2.