World Class Villains

As a point of comparison to CoH/V the other day, Aion earned 89 846 million Won in Q4 2009. Doing the same kind of calculation – converting Won to $US ($76.9m) using an end-of-period exchange rate, dividing that number by $15 a month x 3 for the quarter (so $45) – you end up with 1.7m active accounts over this time period.

Not bad.

Of course, this number is possibly inflated as box sales would still be a key revenue driver for Aion since it launched at the end of Q3 2009. It might also underestimate due to the potential of players to be paying less than $15 a month for their accounts. But it points to something that we haven’t seen in a while – a MMO that has actually grown past its launch period. Aion sold about 970k boxes in its launch month in NA and Europe. For it to have over 1m players at this point means that that it hasn’t seen the boom launch month and bust launch month+1 cycle seem by several other titles released in Western markets since 2008.

Of course, this would be 1.7m active accounts overall – Korea, NA and Europe (as well as other countries I might be unaware of) and it was launched in Korea first. It is very hard to determine individual country contribution to Aion’s revenue and active subscriber count, but revenue keeps going up for Aion since it launched in Q3 2009 in the West (Q3 2009 was 78 958 million Won, Q4 2009 was 89 846 million Won – a 14% growth).

All in all, a very positive thing for NCsoft. The Q1 2010 figures will be interesting indeed.