Nexon Financials: Strong In China, Korea, Less So In Japan, NA, Europe
Earlier in the week, we learned about NCSoft's pretty good financial picture as of the end of 2014, and today it was Nexon's turn.
First, the good news: Q4 evenues in China and Korea were up substantially year-over-year, with growth of 36% and 52%, respectively. Overall revenue was up 42.9 billion yen -- about $360 million -- in Q4, a year-over-year increase of 25%.
Outside of China and Korea, things aren't as bright. Japan is singled out as a sore spot, with the "right strategy, but not executed well enough" -- which reads like the leadership was just fine, it was just those pesky employees who screwed everything up, please don't fire us, we're executives!
And if you need any notion of what Nexon's investment in the West is like, this one chart should tell you everything you need to know:
That said, Nexon did announce "year-over-year revenue growth from key PC titles, MapleStory, Mabinogi, and Vindictus, supported by improved operations and marketing" in North America, Europe, and other Western regions.
Nexon remains optimistic about 2015, though, with several games scheduled to launch in the coming year, billed as the "richest pipeline in Nexon's history."
You can read the full financial report here.
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Jason Winter is a veteran gaming journalist, he brings a wide range of experience to MMOBomb, including two years with Beckett Media where he served as the editor of the leading gaming magazine Massive Online Gamer. He has also written professionally for several gaming websites.
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-maplestory is not a pvp game, so having a bunch of pay 2 win content and hard to defeat bosses unless you shell out large amounts of money is a good reason as to why you arent making money
-maplestory thats pretty much what everyone goes to maplestory for or talk about. Nobody really cares for the other games, thats most likely due to there being a bunch of content that isn't released for this region while other continents are 3 years ahead of us in terms of updates
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One of my favorite MMOFPS games is Alliance of Valiant Arms, but the aeria version is so devastated by the cash shop, it's not even worth it. I paid the price of having 200 Ping on the Brazilian server, but it's totally worth it, it's not P2W at all... so far.
Back in the past, Nexon NA was doing well. Maplestory was popular (still is, just much less so), Mabinogi was a treat for a less linear MMO...but somewhere along the line they got lazy or greedy. They put less support into their games, and ramped their cash shops up with RNG boxes of hell. They took games that had significant backing, and pulled the biggest offensives you can with free-to-play titles.
If you're going to have lack luster control over your game, yet sell RNG related items with low chances and high price...Of course you're doomed to fail.
Asian developed games always have the most up to date content and patches they are perfectly translated and fit exactly into the asian culture.
They then release so called betas in other countrys that never really catch up to the asian patches and are never really fully translated properly with all culture and jokes / foul language considered. Every country will have there own version of the game with there own cash shops and different content unless its some kind of global launch then its just a laggy nightmare for every one.
So like i said what do they expect.... Im not speaking about nexon in specific just take your pick.
On a side note, one thing the asian developers get right imo is that they realize there players will be playing these games for years to come so yes they put in a heavy grind, and that doesnt sit to well with the average joe who wants everything now now now.