NCSoft's Q2 Financials: Lineage Excels, Notion Of Guild Wars 2 Mobile Floated

NCSoft released its Q2 2019 financial results today, and -- with the exception of one game -- it's business as usual, but with one surprising piece of news. The game that's doing well is the original Lineage, which upped its revenue from 20,719 million Korean won (mKRW) in Q1 to 50,109 mKRW in Q2, a leap attributed to the Remaster update and monetization revamp.

NCSoft's other four major games either saw small increases (for Aion) or decreases (for Lineage 2, Blade & Soul, and Guild Wars 2) in their QoQ revenue. Mobile games also went up, from 198,775 mKRW to 223,828 mKRW -- thanks in part to the launch of Lineage M in Japan -- and overall sales for the company rose from 358,756 mKRW to 410,786 mKRW.

The big news, however, doesn't come from the reports (which you can download from the NCSoft investor relations site), but from the earnings conference call, which you can listen to here. In that call, NCSoft was asked about any plans it might have for Guild Wars 2 as a mobile title. The response, via a translator and starting at 26:55, was:

"Right now, at ArenaNet ... there are various considerations and various options that we are currently reviewing, and there are prototypes that are being built as a result of that. As of now, it would be difficult to say 'Yes, we are going to have a mobile' or 'We're not going to have a mobile version of Guild Wars 2,' because again, right now, we're in a phase in which we're exploring all of the options that would be available. For example, a Guild Wars 2 mobile or maybe, with limited resources, where they're pursuing something of a different nature or a different project that would be better is still something that is under review, so that is where we sit as of today."

(Note: We believe the speaker stumbled a bit and said "uh, limited resources" instead of "unlimited resources" because the second would be weird.)

We're not quite ready to tout the headline of "Guild Wars 2 For Mobile Confirmed!" because this response -- coming from an NCSoft executive who didn't exactly have the chance to reach out to ArenaNet CEO Mike O'Brien and get his thoughts before forming his reply -- is probably just a theoretical, "we're considering everything and not ruling out anything" reply. Has the possibility of a GW2 mobile version ever been discussed at the highest levels of ArenaNet and NCSoft? Most likely. Has any real development work been done on it? That, I think, is less than likely.

Then again, for a company that experienced layoffs earlier this year and doesn't seem to have anything else notable in the pipeline ... well, it wouldn't be the craziest thing for them to be working on a mobile game. Would it be a full translation of the entire MMORPG on mobile? Or some kind of limited experience or side game? Even without ArenaNet's "when it's ready" philosophy of making announcements, I think we'd be a good ways away from hearing anything solid about Guild Wars 2 on mobile. We'll just have to wait and see.