NCsoft Austin Lays Off 20% of Workforce |
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NCSoft Austin has recently announced that they are laying off 70 workers from its 300 person workforce - a number which is so far from the earlier predicted mass lay-off of workers by an independent game blog - 80 percent of GMs, 90 percent of tech support and 75 percent of QA. In a company statement released recently, "as the company continues to grow its live products and prepares its next set of major online game releases for later in 2006 and 2007, the company sees a slowdown in its launch pattern and the need to streamline its business." Something tells me that more heads will roll along the business streamlining way.
This is quite ironic since according to PlayNC.com, a NCSoft website, the Austin branch is still hiring numerous positions to work on the anticipated online RPG Tabula Rasa, which is being headed up by Ultima creator Richard Garriott. Maybe they need fresh perspectives from newcomers, we just don't know.
The lay off may be connected to its reported profits. In Q1, their profits had plummeted nearly 50 percent on a year-over-year basis. In that earnings report, NCsoft blamed declining sales of its City of Heroes and City of Villains MMOs, as well as lagging sales of the original Guild Wars as gamers anticipated the follow-up, Guild Wars Factions. City of Villains' and City of Heroes' sales dropped by 58 percent, and Guild Wars' by 57 percent. Auto Assault, a part of NCSoft's MMO stables, is also a disappointment in sales - it only has less than 10,000 subscriptions.
Via NextGeneration
1 Jumps No level-up system for APB
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1 Jumps Play World of Warcraft Offline
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Comments
Too much ass whooping from WoW. The MMO dev community needs to sit down at the table and have a healthy helping of humble pie. The "Next Gen" of MMO's is here - it's WoW. People who don't accept that, and learn the lessons they need to from WoW (the way Blizzard learned the lessons they needed to from EQ) will fail in the MMO market. It's not enough to come in through the front door (ala WoW) or the back door (ala EVE Online) without genuine artistic and creative talent. You can argue about game design all day long - it's all just a useless bag of theory without genuine talent. Making a MMO nowadays is just the same as making a successful movie - it takes real artists, real writers, real musicians - plus a good set of "Directors" who have a clear artistic vision and know how to balance it all out. A high polygon count and the fact that it's "Massively Multiplayer" just won't cut it anymore. You could take 80% of all the MMO's on the market and in development right now and chuck them in the trash - it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference.
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