Korean game sector shifts to consoles as mobile market falls

South Korean game developers are rushing to introduce titles for consoles targeting die-hard players amid the shrinking mobile market.

A survey of 10,000 people by the Korea Creative Content Agency on Monday showed 62.9% of the participants played games from June 2022 to June 2023, down 11.5 percentage points from a year earlier.

Game players had been increasing since the COVID-19 outbreak with the rate up to 74.4% in 2022 from 71.3% in 2021, 70.5% in 2020 and 65.7% in 2019.

The rate for mobile games, which have the largest number of users, skidded by 9.4 percentage points to 53.2% this year, while the rate for PC games eased to 38.4% from 40.3%.

On the other hand, the rate for console games rose by 1.8 percentage points to 15.1%.

Hours of playing games on all platforms rose 20.5% to 159 minutes a day during weekdays and 23.9% to 241 minutes on weekends.

The poll suggested mobile games, which are the most accessible, taking a toll from the subsiding COVID-19 effect, while console titles attracted enthusiastic users more, industry sources said. PC games fared better than mobile titles thanks to the die-hard fans, they added.

RUSH TO CONSOLE GAMES

The trend caused the South Korean industry to strengthen games for consoles and PCs.

Gaming giant Nexon Co. is scheduled to unveil a version of Dave the Diver for Nintendo Switch this year. The role-playing game (RPG) for PCs was a global hit with the company selling more than 2 million copies, especially in overseas markets.

NCSOFT Corp., the leading South Korean game developer, plans to release console and PC versions of Throne and Liberty, its upcoming massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG).

Shift Up Corp., the developer of the third-person shooter action RPG Goddess of Victory: Nikke, is poised to launch Stellar Blade, an exclusive action-adventure game for Sony PlayStation 5.

Neowiz is already enjoying the trend as it has sold more than 1 million copies of its action RPG Lies of P since its release on Sept. 18 with 90% of customers in overseas markets such as North America and Europe where consoles are a mainstream game platform.

The South Korean game industry shifted its business to mobile games from PC titles in the 2010s. Local developers have been focusing on the mobile sector for the past two to three years since the huge success of NCSOFT’s MMORPG Lineage M released in 2017. 

The industry had to change its strategy, however, given the intensifying competition. China has also increasingly regulated foreign games, making it hard for South Korean developers to release new titles in the world’s second-largest game market by revenue after the US.

Chinese rivals improved their technology when Beijing restricted foreign games to attract South Korean players with famous titles such as Genshin and Honkai: Star Rail by Shanghai-based developer miHoYo Co.

Write to Seung-Woo Lee at leeswoo@hankyung.com
 

Jongwoo Cheon edited this article.