South Korean developer NCsoft has reported a recent profit increase of 450 percent. Between April and June in 2008 the company took profits of $4.92million. The same period this year saw the developer raise profits of $110.96 million. The dramatic increase has been credited to its MMORPG Aion which has proven popular in Asia.

NCsoft is also responsible for the highly popular free-to-play MMO Guild Wars. Aion is currently running on 225 servers which are located in Korea, Taiwan, China and Japan, and it generated $32 million in revenue between April and June. The game is set for release in Europe and the USA in September.

The Western MMO market is completely different to the Asian market, and is dominated strongly by World of Warcraft which reportedly enjoys over 10 million monthly subscribers. Other MMOs do hold market share, but none come close to WoW in terms of the sheer magnitude of its subscriber base.

NCsoft has admitted that it is not even considering trying to dethrone WoW, and that it will be more than content if Aion can secure second place in the MMO market.

“I believe the performance of Aion in the US and European markets will be very successful. … We are guessing that Aion will be — could be — the second [most] successful MMO in the US market next to World of Warcraft.” NCsoft stated in a conference call.

When asked about NCsoft’s biggest flop ‘Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa’, the mood at the conference call reportedly became sombre, with NCsoft CFO Jaeho Lee responding, “Ok, um, it’s very unfortunate to hear the name of Tabula Rasa at this conference call,” going on to say “And we all want to forget and erase that memory from our performance.”

While Tabula Rasa was a highly anticipated release, the MMO failed to deliver and went under after one year. The failure of this title has apparently made it difficult to get retailers to place significant orders of Aion.

Aion is due for release in Europe and the USA in mid September and is scheduled for release in SA on September 25.