Tabula Rasa: Financial Disaster

CVG has a painful report (based on a piece from the Korean Times) up about the rather sizeable loss NCSoft made on Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa and how it’s caused a restructuring of NCSoft Austin.

Apparently Tabula Rasa made around £2.7 million (or five billion won) in revenue last year, and NCSoft then projected that it’d make around £8 million (15 billion won) this year. That’s nowhere near enough cash though. It’s estimated the game’s cost NCSoft over £54 [100 USD – GB] million to date.

“Half a year ago I communicated with investors and analysts we had very high expectations for Tabula Rasa”, Lee continued. “After six months, I just put down 15 billion won as an annual revenue target and that’s very disappointing. But I should admit that the actual result of Tabula Rasa has been disappointing.

“If you talk about our development cost we spent in the past several years, probably we are not making any money from this Tabula Rasa project. That should be the reality.”

It’s not confirmed how many staff at NCSoft Austin will get the boot, but the Austin studio will retain a workforce large enough to continue to support Tabula Rasa and will continue to develop other projects as well.

Richard Garriott will still be working on the MMO too, in between training to become a space tourist.

NCSoft has replied calling the article “inflammatory” and “sloppy and sensational” while admitting they are restructuring NCSoft Austin after Tabula Rasa’s lackluster performance.

(The Korea Times English edition story is full of inaccuracies,) he said. (No one at NCsoft said the product is a financial disaster. That came from the writer and is his opinion.

(The TR development did not cost $100 million. I don’t know where that came from. The price tag for the product was much less.a fraction of that cost. Tabula Rasa was not restarted more than twice. It had one overhaul and that came after 2-3 years of development.