NCSoft Conference Call
January 9, 2009 – 5:15 amPosted by: Barberini
This is not recent news (the NCSoft conference call was held on, I believe, November 12, 2008), but I had not seen this on the ’sphere or Guild Wars fansite forums. Thanks to Sente for the tip on the Guild Wars 2 tidbits in the conference call.
The first interesting note was the marketing strategy for Aion, the upcoming NCSoft MMO currently in beta in Korea. NCSoft was pretty happy that they did not spend any money on advertising/marketing until the beta dropped. They just used “buzz and viral marketing” to generate interest for the game. Amazingly enough, their kooky strategy worked, and Aion is currently enjoying a very popular beta.
Originally it seemed ArenaNet planned for 2008 to be the year of Guild Wars 2 marketing. Now that NCSoft is trying to bolster their stock, I think that Guild Wars 2 is going to have a similar marketing style to that of the one tauted in the conference call for Aion. I, and others, have always thought that Guild Wars was under-advertised, and I would much prefer a campaign such as one done for BioWare’s upcoming MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic. But, this does bolster my assumption that when Guild Wars 2 news drops it will be an atom bomb.
The second comment was interesting when an analyst from CitiBank questioned Chris Chung about Guild Wars 2 launch. Chris Chung said a Guild Wars 2 timeline was not 100% set because NCSoft was looking at a number of options for the game timeline. The analyst pressed Chris about a possible holiday ‘09 launch, and he said “we’re, we’re certaintly…umm.. shooting for those type of launch schedule.”
This is interesting because it seems that the analysts are not particularly enthused that Guild Wars’ business continues the inevitable decline that occurs when there is no new content to buy, and it seems that NCSoft possibly has “options” to release Guild Wars 2 at different dates. Money talks, people, and analysts represent big money.
That and the fact that the Zaishen Rewards Calendar only goes to April 2009, makes for some interesting speculation.
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