Nexon beats major Korean rivals with China market, PC games

Gaming giant Nexon Co. is dwarfing major South Korean rivals thanks to its success in China and PC titles.

Nexon, a South Korean-Japanese game publisher listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, on Thursday said its operating profit jumped 46% to 56.3 billion yen ($417.4 million) in the January-March period from a year earlier with sales up 36% to 124.1 billion yen.

The developer of the global-hit Dungeon & Fighter established in South Korea in 1994 is currently headquartered in Japan.

On the other hand, South Korea’s gaming behemoth NCSOFT Corp. said its operating profit shrank by about two-thirds to 81.6 billion won ($61.2 million) in the first quarter on-year as sales fell 39.4%. Its rival Netmarble Corp. suffered a double operating loss in the three months with revenue down 4.6%.

PC GAMES, CHINA

Nexon enjoyed strong sales in PC games, which made up about 75% of its total revenue.

Its sales of PC games increased 37% to 93.1 billion yen in the first three months of 2023 on-year on the growing popularity of FIFA Online 4, a free-to-play massively multiplayer online football game, thanks to the 2022 World Cup held late last year.

Sales in China surged 45% to 43.1 billion yen, led by the outperformance of Dungeon & Fighter, an arcade-type belt-scrolling action PC game mixed with role-playing game elements and an epic storyline.

NCSOFT was hit by falling revenue of mobile games, which account for more than 80% of its total sales. The revenue of mobile titles nearly halved to 330.8 billion won due to a lack of new titles when growth in Lineage W, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), stagnated.

The company, however, reported record quarterly sales of Guild Wars 2, an MMORPG released in 2014, in China.

Netmarble has been in the red as it has yet to release new games while sales of the existing titles declined. Its Chinese business is too small to benefit from the recent game market recovery on the mainland.

Write to Ju-Hyun Lee at deep@hankyung.com
 
Jongwoo Cheon edited this article.