NCsoft Corp., South Korea's leading online game developer, said Wednesday its third-quarter net profit tumbled nearly 60 percent from a year earlier due mainly to weak sales from its flagship products amid a lack of fresh titles.
  

Net income amounted to 30.6 billion won ($27.1 million) in the July-September period, down 59.5 percent from 75.7 billion won the previous year, the company said in a regulatory filing.
  

Operating profit came to 50.5 billion won, down 37.8 percent from a year ago, with sales also dipping 7.5 percent on-year to 195.7 billion won over the cited months.
  

The weaker bottom line is attributable largely to the lack of fresh rollouts and updates of its key games, including "Lineage," "Aion" and "Blade & Soul," the company said.
  

Its stagnant sales from the mobile games segment also drove down the overall performance, it added.
  

NCsoft, one of the earliest game ventures in South Korea, has been lagging behind rivals in the mobile sector.
  

The game maker said it plans to bolster the mobile games division in the fourth quarter while beefing up promotions and marketing of key titles that will come upgraded in the next three months.
  

In the fourth quarter, NCsoft is scheduled to release the "Guild War 2" expansion pack, which it hopes will help improve the bottom line.
  

For the third quarter, it booked 126.6 billion won for domestic sales, followed by 25.8 billion won from the U.S. and Europe, 11.4 billion won from Japan and 8.9 billion won from Taiwan, the developer said.
  

NCsoft has also been going through a tough year since it was engaged in a management dispute with another major South Korean player, Nexon Corp.
  

What started as a strategic partnership in 2012 turned into a hostile takeover move by Nexon against NCsoft, ending with Nexon unloading its entire stake in the counterpart last month.
  

Shares of NCsoft were trading at 196,000 won on the main Seoul bourse around 10:25 a.m. on Wednesday, up 4.3 percent from the previous session. The earnings result came before the stock market opened. (Yonhap)