Korean game makers post strong quarter
2009/05/13 10:33Korean game developers are looking optimistically at 2009 with companies posting strong profitson the release of new games like NCsoft’s Aion:
The impressive opening acts of Neowiz and CJ Internet could be overshadowed on Friday when NCsoft, the industry kingpin, reports its quarterly earnings. NCsoft, which built its reputation on the iconic role-playing series, ``Lineage,'' seems to have finally found a heir apparent in ``Aion,'' the company's new fantasy role-playing game that is actually managing to live up to its impossible pre-launch hype.
Gamasutra reported on NCsoft’s impressive earnings in the first quarter of 2009. While it’s not all rosy news for NCsoft with Richard Garriott filing a lawsuit for his termination from the company last year.
Meanwhile, Nexon is also looking at expanding their operations into Japan:
Nexon’s first target is Japan. Though the company has tried to penetrate the U.S. market in the past, it’s been dissatisfied with its performance there, which Kim blames on a different game culture. “As the local game market is saturated, it isn’t a good thing for Korean games to overly compete with each other. We are looking at Japan as our second ‘domestic’ market,” he said.
Nexon also celebrated MapleStory reaching 92 million users worldwide on their four year anniversary of launching in the United States.
The United Kingdom magazine Develop included two Korean game developers on their Develop 100 list of “the world's most bankable games development studios”. Nexon ranked at 19th and NCsoft at 62nd.
The Korean portal Naver is also fattening their bottom line with revenues from their game division.
Futurize Korea: Gamasutra: Korea Rising (January 14, 2008)
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