Korean Mobile Games Are Subjugating Global Game Market Following local on-line games, the Korean mobile games are making inroads into the global market.Strengthening performances of mobile phones a lot, the high technology games such as the 3D and Networkgames associated with the LBS (Location Base Service) are pouring down on the market. Great games of wire& wireless linkage with famous on-line games contribute to the development of the mobile market.

The growing speed of local mobile games is surprising.According to the '2003 annual report of Korean gameindustry' issued by the Korean Entertainment System IndustryAssociation (KESIA), local mobile games keep growing at anannual growth rate of 63% every year from 100 billion won in2002 to 170 billion won in 2003, and is prospected to reach 300billion won by 2007. According to the '2003 trend analysis ofgame development and guide' issued by the Korea GameDevelopment Institute (KGDI), the number of mobile games registeredwith the KGDI has increased 67% compared with lastyear, and the number of multi- platform games, which supportboth on-line and mobile games at the same time, was 41, anincrease of 140% as compared with last year. According toindustry sources, the wire & wireless linkage games were notthinkable at all 2 or 3 years ago and it is a good example that theKorean game industry has been, also, developing technically.

Pouring Down of Hi-Tech Games Such As LBS and 3D

Top of the list of local Korean mobile games this year are the'high technology' games. Above all, the recent mobile LBSgames are noticeable, thus, it will be expected to open a newgenre of mobile games this year.

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GameVil (www.gamevil.com)completed development of thestrategic simulation game entitled "Quasi Three Ancient King doms" byusing LBS technology and it providestheir services through SK Telecomsince February. The basic scenario ofthis game is the battling of one individualagainst another between towns with key positions not onthe Chinese continent but located on SK Telecom's base stations.Making an alliance among users via network like on-line games,they are attacking others and defend themselves.

SoftEnter (www.softenter.com) also provides the services for "Battle Canon Live" the mobile game associated with LBS,which they developed with SK Telecom. This game is a newconcept of mobile game where users fire canons at others readingthe map, on which others' locations are displayed, on theirmobile phones. And its users can express their feelings eitherwith emotion or in "chatting" while enjoying the game.According to the concerned company staff, they are scheduled toshow off a mobile game not only associated with the LBS, butalso to be implemented with the Global Positioning System(GPS) sooner or later. As an LBS game, it is possible to confirmusers' locations in real-time, it shows mobile game's advantagewell, which an on-line game or a PC game can not imitate.

Inparticular, as it can make an alliance between regions and nurturecharacters, it is expected to activate network mobile games.3D Mobile games are also noticeable, which were introducedin Korea last year, together with the LBS. Displaying

Web E&G Korea's (www.webngkr.com) "Pengdori's Dream" and "DanceFactory", Zio Interactive's (www.zio.co.kr) "3D Gunner",GameVil's "Hyper Battle 3D", and etc., it is prospected that thisyear will be the first year for 3D mobile games. "Pengdori's Dream" is a flying action game in which flyingpenguins in the sky and missile attacking effects are expressed in3D and creates excellent visual effects. "Dance Factory" is arhythm game, in which users are pressing the buttons correspondingto directions of arrows coming out according to themelody of the music muck like "DDR", an arcade game. Userscan enjoy exciting rhythms of the dance music while watching adancing girl's rhythmic movements in 3D.Besides, "Hyper Battle 3D" is appraised as the perfect 3Dgame because all the characters in the game and their actions andmovements are expressed in 3D. And "3D Gunner" is a 3Dshooting game that shows battles between battleships andfighters in the background of World War II, plus, it shows evenmore realistic 3D effects.Due to a limited number of 3D mobile phones in the market sofar, not a large demand for these games exists. But, because localmobile service providers are targeting to have sales of more than3 million 3D mobile handsets this year, it is prospected that userswill be able to enjoy more upgraded 3D games in various ways.

Wire & Wireless Linkage Games 'Tide,' LargePortals Pour in

Another tendency of the local mobile games this year is the "wire & wireless linkage." Especially, the large game portalcompanies, including HanGame, NetMarble and MGame, whichjoined the mobile game market after opening the local Koreanmarket for the wireless network in September of last year, 2003,have selected the mobile field as their main strategic market.Accordingly, it is expected that they will compete fiercely withexisting specialized mobile game companies.These companies set up their business strategies to strengthenweb-to-phone service positioning wire & wireless linkage gameson the front, specially based on the wire infra. And it is revealedthat they are developing a variety of wire & wireless games onthe basis of their users being secured through existing internetgames and game know-how.

NHN (www.nhncorp.com) providing the HanGame serviceplans to apply wire&wireless games, which are now limited onlyto the PDA, to mobile phones this year and, thus, show-off 10kinds of in-house developed mobile games consecutively thisyear.

NeoWiz (www.neowiz.com) plans to show-off pet gamesusing an avatar design based on the Pmang and the Say Club, aswell as, unveil network games associated with the 3 mobileservice providers. In addition, they are promoting a publishingbusiness which will explore the mobile role playing and the 3Dgames together with the mobile service providers.

MGame (www.mgame.com) plans to provide services forfour kinds of wire & wireless linkage games that have beendeveloped by their subsidiary company, M JoyNet, and they addmore than 10 kinds of wire&wireless games at the same time thisyear. They are in course of selecting a variety of contentsaccording to the plan that they will provide service combiningcontents and games in the 2nd half of this year.According to the plan to associate not only with the gameplaying, but also, with the point, item and game money. They aregoing on to increase the needed manpower in a exclusive charge.A staff of a mobile game company said, "Though game portalcompanies are now focusing on web-to-phone service, they couldbe a threat to the mobile game companies, as well as, the networkgame companies, if they use their quite a few members as theweapon."

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Great On-line Game to Be Offered by Mobile Service

Nexon (www.nexon.com)is now providing "Mobile Beads", which its subsidiarycompany of Mobile Hands developed and a mobile version ofthe on-line game "Beads" via SK Telecom. This game, whichcan do both a wire & wireless linkage, can convert the pointsacquired in the mobile game into on-line cyber money todeposit. The concerned staff of this company said that theywere going to strengthen the business a lot, launching 10 kindsof mobile games this year, 2004.

HanbitSoft (www.hanbitsoft.co.kr) is planning to release the famous animation "Atom" series this year, 2004 following its entry into themobile game market last year. And, it has become a progressinggame portal business in cooperation with a leadingmobile contents company.

NCsoft (www.ncsoft.co.kr),whichis famous for "Lineage", has been showing off such mobilegames as "Lineage Portion Pangpang" and "Lineage SiegeHero Warfare" that were developed from a model of Lineage,and it supports to deposit points through both a wire & wirelesslinkage.

The Soft (www.accrorace.com) developed a 3Dmobile version of its on-line racing game "Accrorace" and it isnow servicing it through SK Telecom. This company plans tolaunch "Accrorace" mobile games in a series this year, 2004.Besides, quite a few on-line game companies including

Webzen (www.webzen.co.kr) are providing service of mobilegames developed after a model of their own on-line games. Inaccordance with their conclusion that mobile phone's performanceis getting better enough not to damage the productimages of their representative on-line games, it is thought, ingeneral, that they want to be in a strategic position to preoccupythe local Korean mobile game market, which isbecoming larger.

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Mobile Games "Long Run", Too

Mobile games have an disadvantage that their life-span isshort. Recently, however, there are many mobile games that aresurviving more than one year. It's just a few games that dashinto the "long run" showing off their "renewal version" everyyear. Such an exemplary company is called

Pocket Space(www.pocketspace.co.kr). This company that prefixes "pocket" to all its game as the brand name has devoted itself tothe sector of sports. This one of the main reasons why theirgames have a long survival rate. In spite of a disadvantage thatsports games will lose female users, this company has morethan six kinds of mobile games which have been in service formore than three years. In the case of the company's representativegame "Pocket Yagoo", it recorded 600,000 down loadsand sales of KW1.2 billion for 3 years since its launching. Besides, "Bread fish Tycoon 2," which was launched lastyear by Com2Us (www.com2us.com), is surviving over longperiod of time with a sales record of 1 billion won for one year.This game based on the subject of a fish-like cake vendormakes a genre of business simulation simple and appropriatefor mobile games. It is said that users are not fed up easily dueto its many variances, though, its operation is rather simple.Because of the success of this game last year, similar gameshave shown up successively to give rise to the 'Tycoon' syndrome.In addition, "Nom" which is a representative mobile gamefrom Gamevil, recorded monthly sales of 100 million won forone year since its launching. The game, in which a hero characterNom is evading various obstacles can be played with abutton while the game is progressing fast, so it is appraised tohave created a new genre of mobile action.Regarding the mobile games which succeed in maintaining along existence, Kim Do-shik, the president of Pocket Spacesaid, "Showing off the top quality games on the sports sectoronly for five years is the secret of the long run success." , andhe continued, "It's natural that the life-span of mobile gameswhich are sensitive to the fashion is short. As we devoted ourselvesto only one sector, our quality is accepted overseas.Accordingly, we were able to advance into Europe followingJapan and the US. Now, it's time that local Korean game companiesshould have their own peculiarity to advance into globalmarket."

World No. 1 Korean Games, Rush in LoveCalls From All Over the World

According to game industry sources, as Korean mobilegames are developed, so love calls from all over the world arerushing in. Export of mobile games in 2002 was more or less2.5 billion won with a share of only 2% of the total gamemarket. But, it recorded an export of about 10 billion wonworth with a share of 5%. Since each mobile game companyset an export goal of several thousands of million won thisyear, total exports are prospected to increase by geometric progression.It is even more encouraging that the export market isdiversified into Europe, the US and Southeast Asia, not tomention those of Japan and from China in the past.In case of China, Korean on-line game companies havenearly dominated the market, hence, the Korean mobile gamecompanies are advancing into China, too. China has risen to bethe largest market in the world overtaking the US with 120million mobile phone subscribers listed last year. However, thesupplying rate is only 16% and it has an even larger marketpotential. 20 or so Korean mobile game companies advancedinto the Chinese market so far and several other companies arepreparing to penetrate into the market.Following China, recently, KDDI of Japan plays a role of anadvance base for the Korean mobile games' advancing into theJapanese market. According to Edia of Japan's branch office inKorea, KDDI's mobile games supplier, about 20 kinds ofKorean mobile games are serviced through KDDI, thus takingthe largest quantity, except for Japanese based games. Besides,more than 20 other mobile games have passed the service proposalsand are currently going through tests. So, it is estimatedthat more than 30 Korean mobile games will be serviced viaKDDI.

The main reason that Korean local mobile game companiesare relying heavily on KDDI like this is that KDDI uses a Brewbased platform. Local mobile game companies that had experiencedit through KTF, is targeting on KDDI which uses thesame platform as KTF.Though the Japanese Java based mobile game market hasalready been saturated, The Brew based market is now in theintroductory stage in Japan. Local mobile game companies'Brew based game development capabilities and commercialexperiences accumulated in Korea have made themdepend on KDDI as the easy partner.

Apart from China and Japan, Mana Stone (www.manastone.com) which developed its original mobile game "Namoo (Tree)", and Open Town (www.opentown.com) hadsucceeded in exporting their mobile games to Germany. WebE&G Korea had supplied three kinds of mobile games toTelstar, the 1st tier mobile communication service provider forAustralia.

E3net (www.e3net.co.kr) which is well known for "Stacking Coins", supplied their mobile games to ChinaTelecom, the largest mobile communication service provider inTaiwan that has been servicing the games since last February.As more and more local Korean mobile game companiesadvances into the global market, so has Korea's image has beenstrengthened as a strong country in the IT field.

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