What's Behind NC West? - MMORPG & TTH articles 24/09/08

[lyankyj]

here is the source

MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood recently caught up with David Reid, the President of newly minted NC West. The formation of this new company from NCsoft has been the starting point of a number of runors about the future of NCsoft Austin. In this interview, Reid speaks about the new company, and the future of games like Tabula Rasa and Dungeon Runners.

“NC West is really about NCsoft getting serious and doubling down back into the AAA side of the business. These games have big teams, require huge investments, and take years to build but there aren’t many people who do that as well as we do and you can expect to see and hear more from us on the Lineage / City of Heroes / Guild Wars kind of product going forward. That’s what this company is going to be all about.”

[Kaey]

Gracias ly - looks like its going to be OK

[Kaldur]

Austin's offices were just a huge waste of time and money. Creating NCsoft West in Seattle has been one of the greatest moves NCsoft could think of.

[Shmak]

Originally Posted by Kaldur

Austin's offices were just a huge waste of time and money. Creating NCsoft West in Seattle has been one of the greatest moves NCsoft could think of.

They aren't getting rid of the Austin office, just relocating the PR and some other groups.

I personally liked this quote:

“NCsoft’s existing subsidiaries NC Interactive, NC Europe, NC Austin, and ArenaNet will be led as a unified organization under NC West with a dedicated focus towards becoming the world’s premier western publisher of MMOs.”

GL with that.

[Tareith]

It's pretty simple, NC West is just publishing, nothing to do with development. At least it's easier when I read it that way.

This does potentially bode well if they really are going after being a major western player in the MMO market and hopefully they are as serious about it as they are saying.

[Riku]

Maybe they will now have a faster pipeline for games in korea being available for NA/EU. Only time will tell.

[dalin]

Originally Posted by Tareith

It's pretty simple, NC West is just publishing, nothing to do with development. At least it's easier when I read it that way.

This does potentially bode well if they really are going after being a major western player in the MMO market and hopefully they are as serious about it as they are saying.

agreed... doesnt take a genius to look at the effect WoW had on the Asian population... its their largest market, and the game was a total change from the accepted norm for MMORPG (in Asia)...

if the Western model was that successful, stands to reason other developers would want to hone in on it...

[Calindor]

great move

[Mark]

Was Aion mentioned by the NCsoft guy in the article at all?

[Zinrae]

No, but TenTonHammer has a similar article up that does: Exclusive NC West Interview with David Reid, President of Publishing | Ten Ton Hammer

Originally Posted by Article

Ten Ton Hammer: Now that everything is consolidated, will the distribution of information become more streamlined? In the past year, NCsoft Europe has been releasing more information on Aion than the North American branch has. Now that NC West is there, will we see information released at the same time? That sort of thing?

David: If you look at NC West across the territories, we effectively have four separate companies. We have the NC Austin office, the NC Interactive office, ArenaNet, and the Europe office. In the press release, we said that we were going to merge those four offices into one company. The symptom that you talk about is one of those things where communication just wasn't as streamlined as it needed to be. There are other aspects of this where we wanted to make sure that we're focusing our budgets on the right things and making sure we're not doing duplicate work across countries. Things like that.

It's really just something that's going to make this business work in a much more streamlined fashion, exactly as you suggested.

On that note regarding Aion, we're getting a lot of positive reception for Aion in all of our Western territories, but in particular we are looking at what the European branch has done as top-of-the-line marketing there.

They had a great presence at Leipzig and they've done well by that title. The North American team is going to look at that as something to emulate and that the best work going on around the globe is being shared by all the places.

[Sokar]

Originally Posted by Tareith

It's pretty simple, NC West is just publishing, nothing to do with development. At least it's easier when I read it that way.

This isn't entirely true..... a good portion of the GW2 team is still developing here in the US. Unless they choose to change it after GW2 is completed, they are not going to move development in seattle out of the country. All the people working on that game in terms of PURE DEVELOPMENT are staying put.

[Zinrae]

Originally Posted by Sokar

This isn't entirely true..... a good portion of the GW2 team is still developing here in the US. Unless they choose to change it after GW2 is completed, they are not going to move development in seattle out of the country. All the people working on that game in terms of PURE DEVELOPMENT are staying put.

I think what he meant is that the new, NCwest office in Seattle, WA, was just focused on publishing. It sounds like most of the dev stuff isn't moving anywhere at all, but it will still all be a part of NCwest.

[lyankyj]

Originally Posted by Zinrae

No, but TenTonHammer has a similar article up that does: Exclusive NC West Interview with David Reid, President of Publishing | Ten Ton Hammer

It's much much more informative than the one @ MMORPG.com, thanks!


Now we should rename the title of thsi thread adding TTH aswell!

[Tareith]

Originally Posted by Zinrae

I think what he meant is that the new, NCwest office in Seattle, WA, was just focused on publishing. It sounds like most of the dev stuff isn't moving anywhere at all, but it will still all be a part of NCwest.

Correct. There really should be a NC Seattle office which handles all the marketing and publishing for NC Soft under the name NC West. I think the fact that they are doing both development and publishing all by NC Soft is what makes the disconnect a little more difficult. Seems to be Publishing = NC West and NC Soft korea, Development = pretty much everywhere except NC Seattle office. From what they are saying, all the major western executives will be at the Seattle office as well, handing down the mandates for the little offices to follow.