Two “Lineage” mobile games to be released overseas

Lineage 2: Revolution / Courtesy of Netmarble Games

By Yoon Sung-won

Netmarble Games and NCSOFT are pushing to launch their “Lineage” series of mobile games in overseas markets, seeking to expand their domestic mega-hits globally, according to the companies, Wednesday.

Netmarble said Monday it has decided to roll out its mobile role-playing game (RPG) “Lineage 2: Revolution” in Japan, Aug. 23. Japan is one of the world’s largest mobile game markets following China and North America.

“Asian users have expressed high satisfaction with Lineage 2: Revolution’s graphics and extensive game content,” said Cho Shin-hwa, a game director at Netmarble. “We pledge to provide a stable game service in Japan.”

The company released “Lineage 2: Revolution” in 11 Asian countries including Thailand, Taiwan and Singapore, June 14. The game clinched the No. 1 spot at Apple Appstore’s top grossing chart in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau on the day of its global release.

Netmarble said there are more than 8.4 million active user accounts for the game in the Asian market. In Japan, the game has drawn more than 1 million preorders.

Launched in December last year, “Lineage 2: Revolution” set a record first-month in sales of 206 billion won in the Korean market alone.

Netmarble’s drive to release the game overseas has coincided with the launch of new blockbuster mobile titles here, such as Nexon’s “Dark Avenger 3” and Kakao’s “Onmyoji,” which led to fierce competition in the domestic market.

“Once we successfully launch the game in Japan, we plan to expand our market to North America, Europe and China,” a Netmarble official said.

Lineage M / Courtesy of NCSOFT

NCSOFT is also pushing to launch its mobile RPG “Lineage M” globally, starting from releasing it in Taiwan within this year.

“We will launch Lineage M in Taiwan in the latter half of this year,” NCSOFT CFO Yoon Jae-soo said during a conference call, Monday. “We will also release it in Japan and will come up with details scheduled for it later.”

NCSOFT launched “Lineage M” in the domestic market June 21. The company has stressed that “Lineage M” has most of the entertaining features of the original “Lineage” for its computer online platform, including the in-game trading system.

Successfully drawing middle-aged game fans to the mobile platform, “Lineage M” set a record daily sales of 13 billion won July 3. According to market trackers, the company has since generated more than 5 billion won in sales every day. Expectations are that “Lineage M” will be able to record about 600 billion won in annual sales at maximum.

“Lineage M is generating a similar level of daily sales in the first week of its release and has lost few users,” Yoon said. “We have released less than one tenth of the playable content for the game and thus even we cannot speculate how much profit it will generate in the future.”

Meanwhile, NCSOFT said it will launch three more blockbuster mobile games like “Lineage M” before the end of next year.

“Starting from the latter half of this year through next year, we will release three major mobile games based on intellectual properties of our games such as Blade & Soul and AION,” he said.