Since the company made inroads into the overseas market for the first time in 1997, NEXON has been continuously sounding out the possibility of online game success abroad. Thanks to such efforts, NEXON marked 700,000 CCU's for Crazy Arcade BnB in China on September 2004 and gained a good outcome in overseas markets as its Japanese game portal site . NEXON Japan - obtained popularity.
Particularly, NEXON emphasized games overseas such as MapleStory and Kartrider which have been extremely popular at home, with a goal of creating an overseas turnover of 80 billion won ($84.2 million) this year, according to Jay Kim, president and CEO of NEXON.
In 2005 as well, NEXON gained good performance in overseas markets, Kim explained, adding that the company obtained good responses from local gamers by presenting the next-generation MMORPG Mabinogi to Japan, China and Taiwan.
It is reported that especially Mabinogi, which began its formal service on April, 2005, posted 16,000 CCU's, had 350,000 members, and created the highest sales of 1 billion won (around $1.03 million) in the Japanese market by garnering big interest from users.
NEXON expanding at an amazing rate
MapleStory's overseas performance is dazzling. As of February 2006, the unique and fascinating 2D side-scrolling online RPG is being played in Japan, China, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, the US and Canada. The game has a membership of a total of 14,000,000 people.
CEO Kim says about Maple Story: "It is gaining an unprecedented success by launching active world market capture from last year based on domestic performance as a success game which announced a total of 14 million people's member numbers (210,000 CCU's) recently."
MapleStory is continuing a rapid growth pace as the game posted total revenues of 12 billion won (around $12.63 million) worldwide in December of last year and total revenues of 16 billion won (around $16.84 million) in February of this year respectively, according to Kim.
Right now, royalty income that MapleStory posts in each country of the world amounts to 3 billion won (around $3.16 million) every month, a high figure which exceeds the entire revenue of a passable backbone enterprise.
MapleStory's success deserves attention in that it is a representative case through which Korea online game success can be quantitatively and qualitatively increased in the larger overseas market, those involved in its marketing at NEXON note. On top of that, NEXON introduced Kartrider into China, opening its Chinese homepage (www.popkart.com) on Deccember 15, 2005. The casual online game which excited a sensationally strong blast in Korea began its open beta test in China from March 17, 2006, smashing through 200,000 CCU's as of March 26 barely 10 days after it's commercialization. It garnered an explosive popularity of Chinese users comparable to its reception on the Koren peninsula.
Kartrider has since broken through 500,000 CCU's on May of this year and tops 700,000 CCU's at the moment. Kartrider's rapid increase in popularity is being perceived as an engine to maximize NEXON's overseas revenue outcome this year, setting a new Chinese online game market record, Kim underscores.
Adding external publishers Following this, NEXON introduced MapleStory to Europe this past July 27. At present, MapleStory's European service, which is now in a closed beta stage, is scheduled to be presented to users in all 49 European countries through an open service soon.
NEXON will allow even more users to enjoy the game in their native language by adding in German, British English, Spanish, and Dutch language support simultaneously in a closed beta test. They plan to add French as well soon.
CEO Kim reveals that NEXON plans to reinforce its NEXON Portal (www.nexon.com) service drastically. The service has been number one in the game portal category for a long time, servicing around 30 diverse games during the course of this year. To this end, the game company will beef up its game lineup even more by developing new titles itself and by adding games from third-party publishers.
In the second half of the year, NEXON is scheduled to launch a flying, shooting, fantasy style game called Nanaimo and a casual football sports game named Kick Off. Nanaimo, published by NEXON, is a newly-made game which dealt with adventure and challenge in an unknown island named Nanaimo. Kick Off is also expected to become a casual game market marvel.
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