NCSoft moving away from games?

NCSoft, the game developer and publisher responsible for unleashing the Lineage series on the world, has hinted that it may be moving away from game development altogether according to a Korean newspaper article.

The news comes at an interesting time for NCSoft, which has just fully acquired the City of Heroes IP and released MMO Tabula Rasa. The news may be spurred on by falling stock price though according to The Korean Times:

"Korea's largest game company this year has released a series of social-networking services from Openmaru, an in-house software studio, with strong support from its CEO Kim Taek-jin. Meanwhile, its stock price almost halved over the past two months, as investors raised doubt about the prospect of its online games business."

"CEO Kim said Wednesday that the firm will increase investment in the online services sector, which is dominated by big portal operators such as Naver, Daum and SK Communications."

I have to say, for my two cents, it seems like an odd move for the company. Social networking is a fierce field and there's already a large number of established sites catering for that market. Some of those sites have some heavy hitters behind them too.

Only time will tell over whether this is just a rumour or not, but in the mean time you can let us know what you think in the forums.