[NXKR] Nexon Korea To Take Over Sudden Attack and Atlantica

Nexon is known by some Korean companies as the “cancer of the Korean gaming industry”. This is because Nexon has acquired at least one successful company in each of the past several years and has taken over the service of at least one of their new subsidiary’s successful games from another publisher. This has surely worked for Nexon as they remain Korea’s largest online game publisher by revenue and will likely become Korea’s first gaming company to generate of 1 trillion Won in revenues in 2011.

Past examples of this include Nexon’s 2005 acquisition of Wizet, the creators of MapleStory, and in 2008 when Nexon acquired Dungeon Fighter Online (DFO) developer Neople. In the case of Wizet, Nexon was actually working with them since 2003 as Nexon published MapleStory in Korea and Japan and was at the time preparing the game for a global release. However, with Neople, DFO was being published by NHN on their Hangame portal from its launch in 2005 to Nexon’s takeover in 2008.

Both of these takeovers have proved extremely profitable for Nexon as MapleStory is one of the world’s most revenue-making games and DFO has grown to have over 300 million players worldwide and set a recently eclipsed world record of 2.2 million concurrent users.

Nexon continued their pattern of strategic acquisitions last year as they acquired three companies, Atlantica Online developer Ndoors, Sudden Attack developer Gamehi and Everplanet developer Nclipse.

The results of the takeover of Ndoors is likely the most obvious to North American gamers as Atlantica Online has transferred publishers from Ndoors Interactive to Nexon America. It has been announced that Nexon will take over another game from NHN (after DFO in 2008). Starting this Summer Nexon will take over the publishing of Atlantica Online in Korea. Atlantica will become third game to be published by all four publishing branches of Nexon, after MapleStory and Mabinogi. Of course, this number should increase to four by the end of the year as both Nexon Europe and Nexon Japan take on Vindictus.

Gamehi is the developer of the first free online first-person shooter to enter the Korean market, Sudden Attack. Sudden Attack has truly done well in Korea where it holds the fifth highest concurrent user mark of 250,000. Sudden Attack has been published by CJ E&M on their Netmarble portal since its launch in July 2004. Well Gamehi’s publishing contract with CJ E&M for Sudden Attack expires on July 14 and Nexon will take over publishing of the game on that day. Unfortunately, it wasn’t in the original publishing contract that CJ E&M would have to handover the game’s database in the case of a service transfer. Therefore, unless Nexon can negotiate quickly with CJ E&M, no character data will be transferred between the two companies and all Sudden Attack players from CJ E&M will be forced to start over from scratch under Nexon.

It’s not just game transfers that have come as a result of Nexon’s acquisition of Gamehi. The development of MMORPG Dekaron 2 has been canceled as Nexon slashed Gamehi’s development team from 600 to just 200 in a move they describe as “strategic” and “conservative”. This was a huge shock to all Dekaron fans who were patiently awaiting Dekaron 2. The job cuts were not only as a result of the cancellation of Dekaron 2, but also were also due to the sale of Gamehi child company Hope Island to CJ E&M. Another change that came is the change of the Gamehi logo to a much better designed one in my opinion. The new logo also resembles the Nexon logo in many ways.

OLD Gamehi Logo Along With Nexon Group Logo

 

Awesome NEW Gamehi Logo That Looks Like The Nexon Logo In Lots of Ways

As far as Nclipse goes, I honestly haven’t heard much about them recently. Nexon continues to publish Everplanet in Korea and Japan and Everplanet made Msupdate’s Top 5 Nexon Games That Should Be Brought to North America. Maybe we’ll be seeing more of Nclipse in the near future.

[WK] WonderKing Transfers Publishers, But Not to Nexon

It seems that Nexon’s restructuring of subsidiary Ndoors Interactive continues as the North American service of 2D side-scrolling MMORPG WonderKing is transferring publishers just as Atlantica Online did in March. What’s different though is that WonderKing is not transferring to Nexon America as Atlantica did, but to new publisher Ignited Games. I’m starting to think that Nexon’s aim is to eventually close Ndoors Interactive. Visit the WonderKing website for more information.

[AO] Migration Maintenance

Atlantica Online will be going through its final maintenance under Ndoors publishing on Tuesday, March 29, 2011. This is likely the largest and most intensive maintenance ever executed on Atlantica Online. The maintenance will begin at 5:00PM Pacific (8:00PM Eastern) and will last for approximately 11 hours. During this time, the website will be unavailable. You can join the Atlantica team on their Xfire Channel “Atlantica Online” for updates on their progress. The Atlantica team thanks you for your continued support and patience as they become a part of the Nexon family!

After they re-launch the website, you will be able to find Atlantica Online at
http://atlantica.nexon.net

[WK] WonderKing is 1

WonderKing, the 2D side-scrolling MMORPG from Nexon subsidiary Ndoors Interactive, is celebrating its first anniversary on January 28. Ndoors has organized an event which involves users completing surveys to receive free GCoins and event points. Click on the banner below for more details. Grats WK!

[Breaking News] Nexon America to Take Over Atlantica Online

A shake up has taken place in online gaming today as it was announced that Nexon America will take over the English service of Atlantica Online as of Monday, November 1. The transfer of Atlantica Online will be the first noticeable change that is a result of NDOORS’ acquisition into Nexon Corporation earlier this year.

Atlantica Online is an extremely popular persistent online strategy game and was originally launched in North America by Ndoors Interactive on October 30, 2008. Atlantica Online has always been published in Japan by Nexon Japan.

[NXEU] Will Nexon Europe Take Over Service of Atlantica?

Nexon Europe has been on a roll recently with the launch of Mabinogi and Fantage earlier this year and the announcement of the great Vindictus. But will Nexon Europe also take over service of Atlantica for European players from NDOORS Interactive? NDOORS Interactive was acquired into Nexon Corporation earlier this year and since then many publishing agreements have been formed, especially in Japan. The European service of Atlantica is currently being serviced along with the American service by NDOORS Interactive. In a new release some time ago it was said that “Nexon will work with NDOORS to launch Atlantica in Europe”. That made me think. Is Nexon planning on publishing a localized version of Atlantica for Europe instead of making Europe and American share the same servers?

Then this picture was released.

That pictures shows a well with a poster of the Nexon Europe and NDOORS Interactive logos and the game logos of MapleStory, Combat Arms, Mabinogi, Fantage, Vindictus and Atlantica. “TROY” is the latest expansion to Atlantica.

If Nexon Europe does launch Atlantica it will be their sixth game after three years while Nexon America only published six games after five years.