Japanese games company GREE, boasting 270 million in Japan and another 150 million users around the world, has established a branch in Korea.
Thisisgame interviewed Tomoyuki Isaka and MyungHoon Lim, respectively the president and the head of GREE Korea.
» Read more: GREE to Aim Global Market from Korea
Korean portal site company Daum Communication and Japanese mobile game platform company DeNA launch a mobile game platform Daum Mobage in Korea tomorrow.
Daum Mobage features popular mobile games such as <WeRule>, <Ninja Royal>, and <Happy Ocean>, supporting Android first and Daum account, Daum cash, and mobile and credit cards payment.
Daum Mobage would grow with the help of Daum Communication’s PC/mobile messenger service ‘MyPeople’ used by 16 million people and top mobile advertisement platform ‘Ad@m’.
Both firms also provide ngCore, DeNA’s own game engine that allows easy development with javascript, and software development kit for potential game developers.
[Update: Clarified a few terms to prevent any possible misunderstanding.]
The number of Japanese <TERA>’s server is going to shrink to a third.
NHN Japan announced it yesterday at the official site and the server consolidation will take place on January 5. <TERA> in Japan has just started publishing its commercial service 5 months ago.
During the OBT, <TERA> had shown 48,000 concurrent users(CCU) which was a remarkable number in the market. Its cute female race Elin was especially so popular that the fans created so many UCCs about her.
However its expensive monthly subscription of US$38.50, the advent of bot-program, and frequent bugs after a recent all-out update have beset itself seriously.
To grasp its players tight, NHN Japan increased free time for new players from 20 to 40 hours while holding an event that reduces cooltime of dungeons to half with double chance for valuable items.
NHN Japan said “Although the CCU has been decreased from the initial start it is now more stable than we expected. The server consolidation is to promote better cooperative play.”
<TERA> in Korea also had combined its servers last May after its OBT in January of the same year.
“Although Korea is the country and the market beared and developed the online games, I believe the actual birthplace of the games is Japan in terms of traditional meaning. Nexon will become a recognized company through this listing in Japanese stock market,” said SeungWoo Choi the CEO of Nexon Japan at the conference call on the 14th of December.
Nexon went public yesterday with 1,300 yen(US$16.65) per share and concluded the first day of trading with 1,270 yen(US$16.27), totalling up 54 million yen(US$692M) which is the biggest initial public offering(IPO) ever in Japan this year.
SeungWoo Choi the CEO of Nexon Japan
The CEO of Nexon Japan chose two words ‘Creative’ and ‘Globalization’ which are the founding ideas of Nexon for listing in Japanese stockmarket instead of neither the U.S. nor home makrets. “Japan is a country with the best perception of the game, good product quality, and gamers with high understanding of the game. I believe Nexon’s creativity will be even more beefed up if the company succeeds getting good recognition in such market.”
Choi also said Nexon will become the first Korean company exceeding the annual revenues of 1 trillion won(US$862M) in 2011. “In conservative view, we are expecting US$1B revenues, US$475M business profit, and US$332M net profit at the year-end settlement. 35% of the revenues comes from Korea, 31% China, 18% Japan, 8% the U.S., and 8% other regions.”
Going public in Tokyo Stock Exchange, Nexon seems to secure immense fund about 1.3T won(US$1.12B).
Ntreev Soft revealed its action MORPG <Power Rangers Online> today and announced its first CBT taking place on November 3 at the production report in Seoul.
<Power Rangers Online> is a 8-directions-side-scrolling action MORPG grounded on Japanese TV drama series <Power Rangers>. Its story is based on <Power Rangers Magic Force> aired in Korea 2006.
Watch the video first. :)
Click to watch the play video.
As you can see the play video linked above, only red, yellow, and pink rangers are available during the CBT for now. They fight as ordinary citizen at the beginning of each game and will transform into power rangers later. The ordinary citizen will just punch and kick. Special abilities are only available after the transformation.
The players will start the game at the beginner town ‘Magic Island’ and continue to the main stage headquarter.
Just like the characters, story, etc., enemy bosses are also from the original series. 14 bosses are awaiting the testers during the first CBT. As you might expect the enlarged bosses at the very end of the battle just like the TV series, they of course get enlarged when they get killed once. Then the players will be granted a new combination ability that can only be activated with other players to distroy the enemy. Check it out at the end of the video.
While casting the super awesome combination ability, the players are to hit keyboard as many as they can for next 10 seconds. The one who hit the most will be chosen as MVP and be rewarded a box with random epic items.
