Mobile gaming giant calls for longer product life cycles
Fri 18 Dec 2015
South Korean gaming firm Nexon has vowed to release mobile games with longer life cycles, focusing on attracting users for at least 10 years rather than relying on fad sales.
The company argued that developing a sustainable ecosystem in the mobile gaming industry was more important than generating immediate sales, according to local reports.
“At Nexon, we have implicitly decided that we need to maintain our perspective on the whole ecosystem of the mobile game industry,” said vice president Lee Jung-hun at Nexon’s December conference in Seoul, on Wednesday. He continued: “We want to develop and roll out unprecedented kinds of mobile games that we can stably service for 10 years, not ones favoured by gamers only for a short time.”
Nexon noted that this year had been an opportunity for the company to build the foundations of its mobile gaming business, and looked forward to 2016 as a chance to develop the division in the global market.
“We have tested diverse marketing strategies such as the global-one-build approach and localisation to strengthen competitiveness in the global market,” said Tommy Lee, head of Nexon’s global mobile business. He added that Nexon had recorded over 20 million combined downloads in 2015 for mobile strategy game DomiNations, and role-play game Fantasy War Tactics. Lee believes the company can achieve even greater results next year.
While Nexon is the region’s largest PC gaming business, it has been comparatively laggard in its attempt to break into the mobile world. Domestic competitor Netmarble Games has successfully evolved to target the sector, becoming Korea’s leading provider in the arena and the country’s second largest games company in terms of sales, overtaking MMO developer NCSOFT.
Following its announcement last year that it would initiate a strategic push into the mobile sector, Nexon has built a dedicated mobile business unit, as well as global teams looking at international markets. Nexon has since released nine mobile games including DomiNations, Fantasy War Tactics, card game Mabinogi Duel and Heroes of Incredible Tales (HIT), which has ranked in top grossing position on both Google Play and Apple App Store charts, just weeks after its launch last month.
