NCsoft — of Guild Wars, Tabula Rasa and Aion fame — is set to re-focus it’s entire American and European into one label called NC West. This new branch will be headquartered in Seattle, Washington USA where the company will now completely focus that branch into creating MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Games) for the Western market, meaning both Europe and America.
The subsidiaries that are all being sucked into one NC West label include: NC Interactive, NC Europe, NC Austin, and ArenaNet with top brass from the companies heading up various parts of NC West, which is still a tentative title.
In a Kotaku interview, Reid talked of the rationale behind restructuring of the companies Western operations. He said that the restructuring was geared toward refocusing the company on big-budget MMOGs targeted at Western audiences: “This transition is really about ratifying a completely dedicated business to the triple-A titles. We would consider ourselves in the class of five-ish companies in the world that can be successful in this market. We are a leader here and we are doubling down in those efforts.”
Part of those efforts relate to NCsoft moving away from casual MMOG development. In August, the publisher said that the 21 positions eliminated at its Austin studio related to the free-to-play, ad-supported Dungeon Runners, as well as products that “we have not previously announced and were in prototype phases.” Another factor for its consolidation is the publisher’s focus on the console space. Last year, the publisher announced that it had entered into a partnership with Sony to develop online games for the PlayStation 3.
Reid said that an additional 12 positions have been eliminated at the publisher’s Austin studio as a result of the consolidation, and an NCsoft representative confirmed that 58 positions “have been identified as potentially redundant” at the publisher’s UK office. “Most of those positions are from the product-development organization there,” the NCsoft rep commented.
Via GameSpot