As I posted before, Korean online game is really advanced. There are 3 major companies in Korean online game market, NHN, Nexon, and NCsoft.

Among them, especially NCsoft has their edge at MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game). NCsoft’s Lineage seriese is a legendary in Korean online game industry, NCsoft launched Lineage 1 in 1998 and Lineage 2 in 2003 and both were very successfully in Korean market, also they are earning money from Europe and other Asia too. Recently NCsoft launched their new MMORPG named AION and it seems to be preety success so far. Following is AION’s official trailer.

AION was released as OBT (Open Beta Test) on November 11th, and it started to charge a fee for playing game from November 25th. However, it still keeps its online game ranking as #1 as follow.

With AION effect, visitors for NCsoft’s game portal, PlayNC(www.plaync.co.kr), are also increasing, and it is ranked as #5 among game portal in Korea. Actually, NCsoft hasn’t made the masterpiece again since its first big success, Lineage 1.  AION’s launching is very successful so far, and AION might be the the next step for NCsoft.

Several days ago, I have posted how EA is exploiting Korean Online Game’s competitiveness by partnering with major Korean Game Developers. One good example is EA’s collaboration with NeoWiz on its flagship product FIFA.

Today EA has released interesting news regarding on this Move. EA Korea has acquired another Korean Game Developer called J2M(www.j2m.co.kr) which has produced popular game products such as RayCity (Driving Game) and Debut (Online Dancing Game). J2M, founded in 2004, is regarded by industry experts as one of the companies which have both game developing capability and service delivery Knowhow. EA, which has been motivated by the success of its first collaboration effort in FIFA Online, is actively continuing to monitor Korean market for the quest of discovering the next growth platform.

GStar 2008, International Game Exhibition in Korea, is held from November 13th to 16th.  This is its 4th year and includes show cases of game companies, IeSF invitational (International e-sports events), Korean Game Conferences 2008, and World Game Culture Conference 2008. More than 150 domestic and foreign enterprises, and over 3,000 possible buyers are participating GStar this year.

Last year I went to the GStar 2007 and posted my impression from GStar 2007. I thought the exhibition was biased to Korean game company and market. With this previous experience and with some additional information this year I get the feeling that GStar is still somewhat biased. Even though some global companies such as Microsoft and Intel are participating this year, no major western game company such as Blizzard or EA is present this year either. Diversity of game genres is another biased thing. Since Korean game market is mainly about online games, most of the products in this years exhibition are consequently also online games.

I’m not sure whether I will be able to attend GStar this year. However if I will have the chance to go this weekend, I will post more about the event soon.