South Korean game major NCSoft Corp. delivered strong results in the second quarter of 2025 that far exceeded market expectations, thanks to the steady popularity of its flagship IPs “Lineage” and “AION.”

NCSoft announced on Tuesday that its operating profit for the second quarter of the year was 15.1 billion won ($10.9 million), up 70.5 percent from the same period a year ago. Revenue grew 3.7 percent to 382.4 billion won.

The figures easily surpassed market forecasts, which had predicted declines of up to 35 percent in both sales and operating profit compared to the previous year.

Major IPs were the driving force behind the earnings surprise. “Lineage M” recorded sales of 121.1 billion won, up 13.2 percent from a year ago, to secure the top spot among NCSoft‘s IPs. This was followed by “Lineage 2M,” which expanded service to Southeast Asia, with 48 billion won in revenue, or up 13.4 percent during the same period.

Overall mobile game sales totaled 219 billion won, up 0.3 percent from the previous year and up 6 percent from the previous quarter. PC game revenue climbed notably to 91.7 billion won, up 6 percent on year and 10 percent on quarter, boosted by the launch of the new AION servers.

Domestic sales stood at 244.8 billion won, up 2 percent from the second quarter of 2024, while Asia sales surged 21 percent to 69.1 billion won thanks to the Lineage 2M launch effect.

“We have now established a structure where our legacy IPs alone can generate consistent profit,” NCSoft co-CEO Park Byung-moo said. “When new titles are added on top of this, the operational leverage effect will be significant.”

NCSoft plans to release “AION 2” in Korea and Taiwan in the fourth quarter of 2025, followed by seven more titles in 2026, including “Breakers,” “Time Takers,” “LLL,” and four spin-off games.

For existing IPs, the company will expand into new regions, bringing Lineage M and Lineage 2M to China and “Lineage W” to Southeast Asia in 2026.

“If we add new title revenue to our legacy IP earnings, we believe the 2026 revenue target of 2 to 2.5 trillion won is well within reach,” NCSoft CFO Hong Won-jun said.

The company also unveiled plans to diversify beyond MMORPGs through M&A.

“We aim to secure a presence in the mobile casual sector and are continually exploring investment and acquisition opportunities,” Hong said.

Park also added that previous overseas M&A attempts for mobile casual clusters were hindered by valuation gaps but NCSoft will now take a more flexible approach by considering smaller-scale acquisitions to build internal know-how.

Following a major restructuring in 2024, the company hinted at further workforce reductions in the second half of 2025. Park noted that the company streamlined about 100 overseas positions in the first half of 2025 and plans to reduce “200 to 300 positions in overlapping or inefficient teams” in the second half of the year.

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