Nexon vows to extend mobile game lifecycle
Nexon’s domestic mobile business division head Noh Jung-hwan, right, and global division head Tommy Lee speak during the company’s year-end conference at Nexon Arena in Seocho, southern Seoul, Wednesday. / Courtesy of Nexon
By Yoon Sung-won
Nexon, the nation’s top game company, has pledged to launch mobile games with longer lifecycles that the company can service for more than 10 years.
The company stressed that building a sustainable ecosystem in the mobile game industry is more important than immediate sales competition.
“At Nexon, we have implicitly decided that we need to maintain our perspective on the whole ecosystem of the mobile game industry,” Nexon Vice President Lee Jung-hun said during the company’s year-end conference in Seoul, Wednesday. “We want to develop and roll out unprecedented kinds of mobile games that we can stably service for 10 years, not ones favored by gamers only for a short time.”
Citing this year as the time of building the foundation to foster its mobile game business on the global stage, Nexon’s global mobile business division head, Tommy Lee, said that its mobile games will be more successful in the global market next year.
“We have tested diverse marketing strategies such as the global-one-build approach and localization to strengthen competitiveness in the global market,” he said.
“We have launched the mobile strategy game DomiNations and the role-playing game Fantasy War Tactics this year and have recorded more than 17 million and 3 million downloads, respectively. We believe we can do better next year.”
Despite Nexon being the nation’s largest computer online game business, it has been relatively slow to react in the mobile sector. In the meantime, Netmarble Games has aggressively and successfully pushed for the mobile sector and has become Korea’s top mobile game provider and the second-largest game company in sales, replacing NCSOFT.
After announcing that it will start a full-fledged drive for the mobile sector, Nexon has strengthened its mobile game business divisions and organized a separate team dedicated to global markets.
The company has rolled out nine mobile games including DomiNations, Fantasy War Tactics and the card game Mabinogi Duel.
In particular, its role-playing game, Heroes of Incredible Tales (HIT), has held down first place on the top grossing charts at both Google Play and the Apple Appstore since it was launched last month. It is the first time for a Nexon mobile game to rank on top of both charts.
Nexon’s domestic mobile business division head, Noh Jung-hwan, said the company will continue to focus on providing mobile titles based on its existing intellectual properties.
“Nexon already understands the importance of intellectual properties and will concentrate on development and sourcing by tapping into such assets,” Noh said. “Nexon and its subsidiaries are working to develop new titles while building partnerships for publication rights to roll out about 20 new mobile games next year.”
Noh also said the company will expand its presence as a game publisher on the global stage.
“Game publishing and investment capabilities have become more important in the mobile sector. We have already achieved good results in cooperation with U.S. game studio, Big Huge Games, for DomiNations,” he said. “We will continue to work to build trust and a vast network with partners at home and abroad.”