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The Battle of Online Baseball Games

April 12th, 2012

CJ E&M, NCsoft and Nexon will compete in baseball game genre.

Nexon declares developing an online baseball game based on the real world first. Nexon also showed its aggressive move toward baseball genre by announcing the online baseball game development plan with 2K Sports in May, 2011 and starting to sponsor one of Korean professional baseball teams – Lotte Giants.

NCsoft made a contract with EA to publish ‘MVP Baseball Online’. The game is developed by EA Korea Seoul Studio. Because NCsoft found 9th professional baseball team ‘NC Dinosaur’, the company is known to give wholehearted support to its baseball game.

CJ E&M also revealed ‘MAGU The Real’, a baseball game by Unreal Engine 3. The game emphasizes its reality by adopting the real data from Korean professional baseball league.

The interesting issue is that a rival, ‘MLB 2K’ and ‘MVP Baseball’, will compete with each other again in Korea. Since 2K Sports acquired exclusive MLB license in 2006, ‘MVP Baseball’ has not released the latest version since 2005. However the exclusive contract is expired in 2012, ‘MVP Baseball’ could get MLB license as well.

NC Dinosaur is a team based on Changwon regionally, while Lotte Giants, which is sponsored by Nexon, is based on Busan. Two teams are doomed to become a rival since Changwon and Busan is very close. We expect that it is not far away two biggest online game companies in Korea will fight each other at baseball stadiums.

We cannot under estimate CJ E&M’s ‘MAGU The Real’ because CJ E&M is the current leader in Korean online baseball game market with ‘MaguMagu’.

‘MAGU The Real’ is expected to be available in late 2012, while ‘2K Baseball Online’ is scheduled for 2013. There is nothing to be known about ‘MVP Baseball Online’ releasing schedule. We expect it to be available 2013 as well.

Common things among 3 different online baseball games are that they all emphasize its reality as well as all of them will be likely to have KBO(Korean Baseball Organization) license.

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Nexon, Sponsoring a pro baseball team

March 19th, 2012

Nexon announces the sponsorship contract for a year with Lotte Giants, a Korean professional baseball team.

According to the contract, Lotte Giants athletes will wear the uniform that has Nexon logo on the right side of its chest. It is similar to the sub-sponsorship between Nexon Japan and Chiba Lotte Marines, a professional baseball team in Japan.

In addition, Nexon will have special seats called Nexon Zone at Giant’s home stadium and the ads will be appeared continuously through LED billboards at the stadium.

Besides all of these, Nexon will promote their upcoming games with Lotte Giants and have off-line events called Nexon Special Day in the first half and the second half of the year.

Byung-su Jang, CEO of Lotte Giatns, said “Nexon and Lotte has a common assignment that each needs to provide healthy wholesome entertainment through online and off-line. Both know well about each need to try hard on doing social contribution activities. We won’t let ourselves neglect our duties together.”

Seo Min, CEO of Nexon, said “Nexon has been concerning pro-baseball and we even provided the homepage of KBO(Korea Baseball Organization) for free back to 1996. We are pleasure to make the contract with Lotte Giatns and will try to make the best model between games and pro-baseball.”

NCsoft found a professional baseball team called ‘NC Dinosaur last year. Ironically, Changwon-based NC Dinosaur is closed to Busan-based Lotte Giants geographically. Nexon is developing MLB 2K Online, which is expected to be released in 2013.

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Prosecution Investgates Graft over Baseball Online Game

April 5th, 2011

Prosecution has begun investigation after seizing a situation that an executive of Korean professional baseball player association is accused of taking graft about hundreds of thousands dollars from a game company in return for allowing exclusive right for players’ portrait.

According to YTN’s report on 4th, the prosecution in InCheon echoed the investigation over an executive who has been bribed by a game company from end of 2009 to October 2010.

The game company has raised a slush fund more than US$10m by signing 4 game marketing firms owned by Mr. Lee who is both an ex-CEO of a developer and a broker. The company is implicated in giving millions of money to the executive by taking the advantage of it.

The company which has developed an online baseball game tried to get exclusive publicity right of the old and sitting pro baseball players since its competitor acquired exclusive license including club name, amblem, etc. from KBO ?up to 2012.

Although the license for the game is already expired in the end of 2009, they could use the real names of the players temporarily with consensus and did the lobby to prevent others from acquiring the license.

The executive admitted that he recieved the money without any favors and insisted it is conspiracy. The broker Mr. Lee who is living abroad now plans to come back home within this month to testify.

Meanwhile, the game industry worries any bad effect might derived from this lobby case to ?the growing online baseball game.


Player Association chose NHN as a reseller.


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NCsoft Baseball Team Formally Approved

March 31st, 2011

Korean Baseball Organization(KBO) approved NCsoft’s foundation of 9th professional baseball team.

KBO and NCsoft had a certification handover ceremony in ChangWon where the hometown of NCsoft’s team on March 31. TaekJin Kim the CEO of NCsoft and the owner of the team, YungKu Yoo the chief of KBO, WanSoo Park the mayor of ChangWon, YiSoo Kim the chairman of ChangWon city council attended the venue. In particular, TaekJin Kim exposed himself officially after 3 years’ absence.

“I can pick only few days as glad as I am today in last 30 years. Today is that much meaningful and a day we wrote a new chapter of Korean baseball history. TaekJin Kim also overcame many obstracles and gave faith to all of us. I believe the foundation model of ChangWon and NCsoft will definately affect to next 10th club. I foresee this club will be a club that pay back the support of all the baseball fans,” said YungKu Yoo the cheif of KBO.

“I appreciate TaekJin Kim’s word, ‘ChangWon is NCsoft’s hometown from now on’. ChangWon promises the best support such as building a new stadium. We are trying to achieve 10% of GRP through sports as a sports-driven city. We also look forward to creating vitalization in region and employment,” said WanSoo Park the mayor of ChangWon.

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Crisis on Pro Baseball License Peaks

March 3rd, 2011

Recently, online and mobile baseball game developers are giving up the license of Korean pro baseball.

<Wind Up> developed by Rontab and published by KTH has recently not renewed the license of team and stadium’s real name. Com2us who is currently developing <Pro Baseball> also has decided not to continue using the real name of the teams for their next title.

The biggest reason the developers hesitate signing the license is the increased cost due to the double contract. In the past, they could use the real names and information of each team by contracting with just one, KBO.

However, since 2011, they must make a contract with CJ E&M who has the exclusive right for the information of team and stadium and make another contract with NHN who is entrusted for the information of active players and some of retired players after 2000 in order to use their names.

Even more, another third contract with Nineteen club where about 300 old players retired before 2000 are registered is required if their information is needed.

KTH official said “We wanted to use all the team information in <Wind Up> for our players so badly. But the cost dramatically increases if we sign every contract. And they also request the ‘running guarantee’ out of net income which was not counted in the past redoubles our burden on the expense.”

According to Thisisgame’s cover, NHN demanded 5% of the net income besides the earnest money.

Recently, a claim for damages against <Slugger> published by Neowiz Games?ends in favor of the Nineteen club. The court judged that the pro baseball information’s weight among the total net income of <Slugger> is 22%. Therefore Neowiz Games now has to pay more than US$12.5m(total net income in 2010 is US$58m) to them for just using their names and information.

“We are not saying we do not pay it. We are saying it is irrational. The court’s decision is hard to accept,” said an official from Neowiz Games.

An official from game industry also mentioned, “the pro baseball associations are looking at the online baseball game as a major source of money and have a tendency to demand high expanse under many excuses. But that is not good for both baseball game market and pro baseball in a long term. It will ultimately shrink the new projects and the size of the market which might boomerang on the pro baseball one day.

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