Tabula Rasa largely absent from NCSoft financial reports

by Scott Jon Siegel { Jun 6th 2008 at 10:15PM }

Wherefore art thou, Tabula Rasa? Though we knew the title's been a bit slow to start, we were still a shocked when Richard Garriott's MMO was largely absent from publisher NCSoft's Q1 financial report. As Massively reports, the title appears only twice throughout the publicly accessible earnings report, and neither time in a particularly favorable light.

In a conference call following the release, CFO Lee Jae-Ho confirmed that the "Tabula Rasa operation" has not yet been profitable for NCSoft. This point, however, was only addressed during the Q&A session, and otherwise entirely ignored during Jae-Ho's formal presentation.

For those interested, Massively presents a more thorough breakdown of the financial standing of Tabula Rasa. We'll summarize here by saying "it ain't good."

Tags: ncsoft, richard-garriott, tabula-rasa

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Lone Starr @ Jun 6th 2008 10:24PM

I think its overall absence from the report proves that it's on track.

*rimshot*

ApolloIV @ Jun 6th 2008 10:37PM

Probably because it was a loss of money...

Ignatius @ Jun 6th 2008 11:50PM

Here's an idea, drop the subscription price down to $5 a month and you'll have at least a few thousand people flock to it.

Deozaan @ Jun 6th 2008 11:51PM

"Wherefore" does not mean "where." It is more synonymous with "why."

The whole "Wherefore art thou Romeo?" is Juliet asking why Romeo has to be from the family her own family considers an enemy. That's why the next lines in the play talk about a rose smelling just as sweet by any other name. She's not trying to locate him.

Neebs @ Jun 6th 2008 11:59PM

Mind = FUCKING BLOWN

Volomon @ Jun 7th 2008 1:25AM

The guy (Richard) acted like he was Emperor of the MMO genre then took TWO long vacations one to Vegas and one to NASA. The guy was never there to run the show. I think he just plain went mad.

Haggard @ Jun 7th 2008 7:55AM

Well I mean.. he calls himself Lord and/or General British. Is he even British? What qualifies him for lordship?

Personally although I'm a little saddened to hear this, it does mean one good thing - what I've worried about the surge in popularity of MMOs is that there's so many competing games for the MMO market now that aside from WoW, all the other original ones will attract only a tiny percentage of the non-WoW market each, meaning that the large sense of community that I loved about Guild Wars won't be possible.

DrXym @ Jun 7th 2008 11:10AM

I don't get it either. Gariott should have known a bit better than this give his experience with Ultima Online.

Partner @ Jun 7th 2008 6:54PM

Garriott was born in England, hence the "British" in his nickname.

What qualifies him for lordship, you may ask? Well, probably a lot of things, but I'd have to say it's because he put himself into his own Ultima games as a king/quest-giver NPC. He's not actually invincible in Ultima II at least - I'm pretty sure I managed to kill him, an accomplishment which kind of screws you, but which was a fair bit more entertaining/rewarding than defeating the sorceress Minax at the end of the game.

Kokomadeta @ Jun 7th 2008 1:29AM

Tabula Rasa means 'Blank Slate'.

Korova Pyro aspect @ Jun 7th 2008 7:17AM

Runner up to the most rediculous game breasts award.

Arthan @ Jun 7th 2008 10:44AM

Tabula Rasa is an awesome game. It's sad to see it's just going down like that.

DrXym @ Jun 7th 2008 11:07AM

TR's biggest problem is that the game premise is one big boring cliche that doesn't even appeal to teenage males let alone a wider audience. Oh yippee, I fight as a grungy space marine against generic aliens and I can upgrade my helmet and guns! It's simply not an appealing premise, no matter what the actual game is like. The warning flags are so obvious that I wonder why it was greenlit.

FSK405K @ Jun 7th 2008 1:13PM

When I first heard about TR, I was stoked: sci-fi, larged used of instances--I was thinking Diablo-type quests, an extra language, etc. etc.

Then I played it: oh, this is WoW-questing (go bring me three heads of name-stupid-creature) in the future. Pass.

JD @ Jun 7th 2008 1:49PM

Yea, I don't know why someone didn't hit the reset button on this one long ago. It's AutoAssault all over again.

I was expecting something that would change the basic mechanic of the MMO - a new FPS with team based missions. Instead they took the most generic MMO engine and just slapped another skin on top of it.