Even in a tough economy there is a Korean venture firm, Nurien Software, into which nearly 25 million dollars investment has been made from Silicon Valley and China venture capital investors who saw a great growth potential of 3D socail networking service being converged with various services, contents, and softwares.

“Nurien is a new category of social networking service where we can give our users more powerful ways to express their identities by enabling them to create their own unique avatars, fashions, 3D objects, legacy media (such as photo, video, and text) and share them with the world via their own 3D rooms that are accessible from a web-browser as well as our software clients.” www.Nurien.com

Nurien differentiates itself further from other 3D social networking services by utilizing Unreal Engine 3, a development framework for Xbox 360, PlayStarion 3, etc. to transform 3D social networking in order for users to interact, network, and play games with their personalized 3D avatars. The avatars can move realistically and appear more lifelike, showing each component such as earrings, necklaces, ties, gloves, etc. moves independently.     

Also, Nurien has planned to offer social activity applications to help users interact with each other.

“MStar is an online music dance game similar to game interface such as Guitar Hero or Dance Dance Revolution(DDR). Runway is an innovative fashion show application, players will follow certain rules and various themes to create their own clothing line and compete on a virtual fashion show-where other users within the community will watch and vote online. QuizStar is a casual online game and it is a great way to have fun with friends and meet new people.” www.Nurien.com

I wonder whether Nurien, 3D social networking service, will make inroads into online communities like Cyworld in South Korea by creating a new category of a social networking service. For me it would be an exciting experience to have.

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.