Baek Byung-yeul is a journalist at The Korea Times focused on cultural content, including films and cultural events in South Korea. You can contact him at baekby@koreatimes.co.kr to share your insights.
NCSOFT's new game 'Lineage 2M' off to good start
A poster for NCSOFT's new mobile game “Lineage 2M” / Courtesy of NCSOFT
By Baek Byung-yeul
By Baek Byung-yeul
NCSOFT's new role-playing mobile game “Lineage 2M” got off to a hot start, topping the charts of the Google and Apple app stores soon after its release, the company said Wednesday.
The much-anticipated game was launched at 12 a.m. Wednesday and topped the sales chart of Apple's App Store only nine hours later, and the popular game chart of the Google Play app store.
“Lineage 2M” is a mobile version of popular PC online game “Lineage 2.” It received a lot of attention from gamers before its release, with more than 7.38 million pre-registering for it.
The game has realistic 3D graphics and uses artificial intelligence (AI) technology to make the movements of high-level enemies more unpredictable.
NCSOFT, which has been betting big on “Lineage 2M,” is running marketing campaigns to lure more gamers to the new game.
“To commemorate 'Lineage 2M' topping both the Google and Apple app stores, we are offering game items to players who log on to the game and increase their characters' levels until Dec. 18,” an official said.
The company also launched the beta service of PURPLE, a PC-mobile interconnected game platform, on the same day it released “Lineage 2M,” in a bid to let gamers enjoy the game on smartphones and PCs.
NCSOFT said it decided to launch the service to enable players to enjoy the highly immersive environment of “Lineage 2M” in the PC environment. It said players using PURPLE can more actively communicate because of an enhanced communication feature.
Analysts said the new mobile game will help boost NCSOFT's sales, predicting the company will be able to record more revenue from “Lineage 2M” than it made from its predecessor “Lineage M.”
“NCSOFT is expected to log more revenue from 'Lineage 2M' than it earned from 'Lineage M' when the new mobile game is released in overseas markets,” Hwang Seung-taek, an analyst at Hana Financial Investment, said. The global launch date of “Lineage 2M” has not been announced.
It also remains to be seen whether the new mobile game can break the daily sales record set by “Lineage M.” When the predecessor was released in June 2017, the game recorded daily sales of 10.7 billion won ($9.09 million).