NCSoft's Q3 2015 Financial Report: Everything's Down, But Should Rebound In Q4

You can download the most recent NCSoft financial report today from the company's Earnings Releases page, and, unlike Bob Ross on Twitch, it doesn't exactly paint a pretty picture.

As you can see from the chart at the top, every measurable financial indicator is down from Q2 to Q3 and also year-over-year from Q3 2014 to Q3 2015. If you want to paint things in a little bit of a positive light, you can say that summer (Q3 ran through July, August, and September) tends to be a slow time for video games, though the YoY decline is a little more difficult to swallow. It's not hard to see why Nexon bowed out last month.

On a game-by-game basis, literally everything is down across the board. The exact values can be seen below:

Percentage-wise, that's a quarterly decline of 8.5% for Lineage, 4.0% for Lineage 2, 16.5% for Aion, 16.3% for Blade & Soul, 7.9% for Guild Wars 2, and 16.8% for WildStar. Notably, this is Aion's lowest sales number since its launch quarter of Q4 2008, when it was available for about a month in South Korea only.

Here's the good news, though: Q4 is almost guaranteed to be better. WildStar went free-to-play just a couple of days before the end of Q3, so any improvement in its situation should be notable on the next financial statement. Guild Wars 2's Heart of Thorns expansion went live just a couple weeks ago, so sales for that should give it a nice boost. And Lineage 2 and Aion have both come to Steam, too, so that could help shore up those venerable games, too.

Q3 might have been down because of all the prep that went into Q4's moves, so I wouldn't really panic just yet if I were NCSoft. If Q4 disappoints, though... well, let's think happy thoughts, shall we? Bob Ross would have wanted it that way.