Early this year Austin based game developer Spacetime Studios announced it was cutting its staff down by 12 members following the decision by NCsoft not to publish their sci-fi MMO title Blackstar. While Spacetime reacquired the Blackstar IP from NCsoft in May they have since had problems finding a publisher for their long-in-development title.Now the company's official web site has posted up word that they are cutting staff yet again, from 32 to 16 team members, as they continue their search for a Blackstar publisher. Simply put, the company could not continue to afford spending money at their current rate without a deal. The statement reads, "We will be letting some very good folks go. They will receive extended benefits and we will be doing everything we can to help them land on their feet again."[Via Massively]...

Korean based MMO publisher NCsoft has revealed its latest financial results for the first quarter of 2008 and it's a bit of a mixed bag. Revenue for the quarter was $84.3 million, up 4 percent from the same period a year ago. However, the publisher's net profit was $7.7 billion which is down 43 percent from the same period a year ago. In terms of the higher revenue NCsoft stated that one of the reasons was the continued high sales of its fantasy MMO Lineage II which had "record high sales" in the last quarter compared to its launch way back in 2003. Continued high sales of Guild Wars and City of Heroes and a reduction of costs like advertising also helped with the revenues. The company's lower profit was hit by a one time reduction of costs because of NCsoft's decision to break ties with Spacetime Studios and not publish their upcoming sci-fi MMO Blackstar (Spacetime recently announced it had reacquired the Blackstar IP from NCsoft and is continuing to develop the game).NCsoft's major new release for 2008 seems to be the title Aion which is currently scheduled to be released in Korea later this year A line of casual titles is also in the works to be released this year as well. One interesting item of note is the breakdown of sales from individual NCsoft games. Lineage, Lineage II, City of Heroes/Villains, and Guild Wars were all but not Tabula Rasa which indicates that sales of that recently release game have yet to significantly impact the company's results....

NCsoft announced way back in March 2006 that it had signed Austin-based Spacetime Studios to develop a sci-fi themed MMO for the publisher. Unfortunately, NCsoft decided to cancel the game, titled Blackstar, at the beginning of this year. Unlike other developers who might shut down entirely after such a move, Spacetime Studios decided to keep going (although they did lay off 12 members of their staff). Today the company announced some good news; they have acquired the Blackstar IP back from NCsoft which will allow them to continue developing the game they originally had in mind and shop that game around to other publishers. We got to see a brief demo of Blackstar at the Game Developers Conference back in February and it certainly fits the description that the developer has in its Blackstar PDF brochure; a anime-influenced space combat MMO with elements of Wing Commander and Descent. Hopefully this game will be released in the near future....