Category Archives: Korea

Global Industry Analysts (GIA) expects the global gaming market to reach $91 billion by 2015.

The report, titled Video Games: A Global Strategic Business Report, was complied by GIA reviewing trends in gaming from 2001-2015.

It was concluded that growth can be attributed to the climbing installed bases of consoles, the popularity of MMOs, mobile games, more customers acquiring high speed internet, and the increased access to all of these in developing countries in Asia-Pacific and Latin America.

Due to purchasing figures for PS3, Wii and Xbox 360, gamers in Europe and North America spent the most in 2009, with East Asia and Japan driving the sales of MMOs, and mobile phones games driving the market in developing countries.

The full report can be viewed here.

Via IndustryGamers.

Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov and founding partner Henk Rogers were at E3 last week, and while having a bit of a chat with Kotaku about the future of the classic puzzler, Rogers revealed that he would like to see the title become more than just a game.

The latest iteration of the series is a six-person multiplayer experience being tested in Korea, using the tried-and-true formula along with new attack and defense items.

“That’s an interesting evolution of Tetris,” Rogers told the site “The future is a country that has 48 million people living in it and the biggest casual gaming site in the country has 24 million registered users. That country is Korea. That’s what’s going to happen in the rest of the world.

“We are going to turn Tetris into the first real virtual sport. Sports like baseball and football were created at a time when our future was a lifetime of physical activities and physical fitness. But now that’s not as important, it’s more about mental fitness today.

“Tetris is a virtual sport that exercises the mind. That is the definition of a virtual sport.”

More through the link.

Aion’s success has lifted NCsoft out of the doldrums, giving the Korean firm a 51 percent sales rise in the first quarter compared to the same period last year.

Sales of KRW 133.4 billion ($107.7 million) were achieved in the first three months of the year. Operating income was up heavily to KRW 42.5 billion ($34.3 million), an increase of 128 percent year-on-year.

Aion generated KRW 42.65 billion ($34.57 million) in sales for the period, nearly as much as Lineage 1 and Lineage 2 combined.

More on Gama. Aion releases in the West later this year.

According to this Chosun Online report, Sony is to stop exporting PS3 hardware to South Korea in an effort to stop “reverse importing”.

“We are troubled by ‘reverse-importing’, which is when products exported into South Korea are flown back into Japan,” said a Sony employee.

Thanks to a depreciating South Korean Won and a strong Yen, Japanese punters are increasingly tempted by electronics savings in South Korea.

More on Kotaku.

Professional Warcraft gamer Jae Ho ‘Moon’ Jang has signed a three-year deal with Korean gaming league WeMade FOX worth 700,000,000 won ($473,037).

Previously a member of Warcraft and Starcraft team Meet Your Makers, Moon is please to be playing back home again.

“I am honored to play for a Korea professional gaming team for Koreans. As setting good circumstance of playing, I will give everything to my fans and FOX team by winning lots of titles in 2009,” he said.

This deal makes the 22-year-old the highest-paid professional Warcraft III player and the second highest paid e-Sports player in Korea.

South Korea’s president, Lee Myung-bak, posed a question during his visit to the Ministry of Knowledge Economy this week asking why the nation cannot build a  videogame hardware system to compete with the likes of Nintendo.

“A lot of our elementary school children have Nintendo game machines. Why can’t our companies develop products like that?” he asked.

A Korean news paper reported on the backlash the president received from game execs in the country, says GamePolitics, one of which is was Park Sang-hoon who’s company makes the Linux-based GP2X handheld:

“It would be great if the software industry here was healthy enough to produce a lot of games, which would drive up the sales of handheld consoles and introduce more products onto the market. However, as a latecomer, we have the difficulty of proving our products first and securing third parties later.”

One exec even slammed the prez stating, “You don’t have the right to be daydreaming about Nintendo, when Korean online game firms, which are actually doing well overseas, feel they could do better if the government wasn’t biting at their ankles.”

Ouch.

Full thing through the link.

Nintendo’s sold more than 2 million DS units in South Korea since launching the machine in January 2007, according to Telecoms Korea.

Nintendo of Korea is a young pup: it was only formed in 2006.

Via Kotaku and GoNintendo.

Hellgate London will continue to be published as a free-to-play title by Korean outfit HanbitSoft, the company’s confirmed.

No territories have been specified. Namco has already confirmed it’s to shut the game’s servers down in the West.

HanbitSoft said yesterdav that future updates for Hellgate: London are in the works, with a focus on “strengthening community features”.

The next “large-scale” patch, according to HanbitSoft, will be released “soon,” and will “combine the two game play modes, unifying the split two communities into one.”

More on Gamasutra.

The CEO of Nintendo Korea, Mineo Koda, has told the Asian News Network that the company doesn’t see itself in competition with either Sony or Microsoft.

“People often ask such questions, and we say our competitor is neither those companies, but consumer indifferent to games,” he said.

Koda went on to say he feels Nintendo has a big task ahead of it in changing people’s perceptions of video games in the region.

“As there were many violent games, many parents had negative images of games,” he explained. “We face a major challenge of changing those negative images.

“We believe that the Korean market has growth potential as there are many people who are not interested in online games and who used to play online games, but do not play them anymore,” he added.

Thanks, GI

Korea’s government is backing the nation’s games industry with a 350 billion won ($200 million) investment until 2012, aiming to expand the country’s game exports to 5 trillion won ($3.39 billion) per year.

According to a report in Korean news publication Digital Chosunilbo, Culture, Sports and Tourism Minster Yu In-chon revealed the plans in a recent meeting, citing the potential for the games industry to drive future growth.

More on Gamasutra.

Crytek’s opened an office in Seoul, the company’s announced.

The team will be focused primarily on licensing CryENGINE.

“Establishing an office in Seoul was the logical step to expand our business in Korea as well as giving our engine licensees in this region the best possible support, through direct access to a dedicated local team,” said Faruk Yerli, Cytek boss.

Stop faffing about with Korea and sort Crysis on consoles, please.

More on Electronic Theatre.

The Korean beta for forthcoming NCsoft MMO, Aion: The Tower of Eternity, has reached a total of 170,000 users, making it the most popular event of its type in the country’s history.

More than 11,000 people were logged into the game after only two minutes of the beta service launching, apparently.

“In less than an hour, that number had ballooned to 40,000,” said the firm in a release.

So, quite popular then?

Aion: The Tower of Eternity hits US and Europe next year. Full thing after the break.

By Mike Bowden

More »

Mythic’s confirmed that Warhammer Online is to geta Korean launch.

Hangame’s to handle the localised product.

Korea will get the game next year.

WAR is just the latest western MMO to make the move to the country, with a Korean version of Age of Conan announced only last week.

Press release after the link.

More »

According to this EG story, Funcom’s Age of Conan’s first Asian release will be in Korea.

Korean firm Neowiz will be handling the port.

“We are very excited to introduce the world-class large-scale MMORPG Age of Conan with its popularity and great reputation in the industry,” said Neowiz boss Choi Gwan-ho.

“This will be the first large-scale MMORPG for Neowiz Games and both companies will also work tightly together to adapt and implement a fully localised game for Korean users,” he added.

More through there.

NCsoft’s reported a profit drop of 50 percent for the quarter ending September 30, down to to 5.0 billion won ($3.7 million) on sales of 78.3 billion won ($58.0 million).

Tabula Rasa only accounted for 2 percent of the cash, or 1.76 billion Korean won ($1.3 million), in the period.

Richard Garriott confirmed last night that he’s quitting the firm to pursue “other interests” after returning from his much-publicised space flight.

More on Gamespot.

Bit slow on this, sorry. HanbitSoft – the South Korean company that now owns the rights to Hellgate: London – has confirmed that there’s new content in the pipe for the troubled action-RPG-MMO.

“Since acquiring the intellectual property rights, HanbitSoft Inc., the publisher and distributor of Hellgate: London in Asia, has concentrated on the development of Hellgate: London, and has received many inquiries regarding new updates,” the game’s product manager wrote on his blog.

“Our US development studio is currently working on an update that is to surpass The Abyss Chronicles. This game will be available through our web site. We thank you once again for showing your interest and ask for your continuous support for Hellgate: London, as we hope to bring good news shortly. In the meantime, we will continue developing the world’s best game!”

The game caught on nicely in Asia, despite original creator Flagship biting the bullet earlier this year.

According to this Edge piece, the South Koren gaming market, while growing fast, may be facing a simple matter of physical limitation.

“One of the biggest issues for South Korea itself as a country is that there are limitations to the country’s growth,” said Pearl Research managing director Allison Luong.

“This is because so many people already own PCs and because of the country’s relatively small size. The concern for everybody in South Korea is that it’s at a saturation point.”

The country’s online gaming market will surpass $1.7 billion in revenue next year, up from $1 billion in 2006.

More through the link.

This is actually pretty cool. 1UP managed to get some time with ex-Team Ninja boss Tomonobu Itagaki whilst drunk at Waseda University. Here’s a good bit:

You look at, for instance, back in World War II. You had aerial dogfight battle with 600 planes on each side. And then, as we got into say the Korean War, and now it’s say maybe 50 or 60. And in modern times, with modern jet planes, you only need one or two to fight a battle. So you certainly see a progression like that. So, I do look on it as someone who likes fighter planes and thinks that they’re really cool. The fact that fighter planes themselves have dwindled in number is certainly something that is somewhat regretful. But I still like fighter planes, and I think they’re the coolest type of plane there is.

One thing I will say is that, definitely, you have to have at least some fighter planes. Any country that doesn’t have fighter planes is destined to be extinct. In that metaphor, I think that game companies that aren’t able to do high-end development, or don’t have developers who can work on high-end hardware are destined to ultimately be obsolete in the market. Make sense?

Course it does. Loads more through there.

According to this Thompson Financial story, quoting the Nikkei, both Nintendo and Sony are showing serious signs or moving their businesses into other areas of Asia outside Japan.

Apparently, 20 DS titles are to be release in South Korea this year, and Nintendo “has started providing technologies to a South Korean game developer, which has been working on titles including a simulation game that makes use of the touch screen on the Nintendo DS.”

Sony, on the other hand, “plans to work with Taiwanese authorities to train game creators starting in September,” and is also looking to expand PS3 operations in South Korea.

More through the link.

According to this press release, Webzen MMOFPS Huxley’s entered open beta in South Korea.

“Huxley is a creative, thrilling and immersive adventure, and we are excited to open the break-through game to the mass public for the first time anywhere in the world,” said Webzen meta-king Nam Ju Kim.

“Huxley combines the unmatched Unreal Engine 3-based first-person shooting action with Webzen’s proprietary networking technology for an online gaming experience like no other. We are expecting great results from the Korean beta, leading to broad anticipation and excitement for Huxley all around the world.”

Still no date on this for Europe. For shame. Out in the US this year.