South Korean mobile game giant goes from strength to strength
SEOUL- Company crosses 1 trillion won revenue for second successive year
Led by the worldwide success of its mobile games, South Korea’s Netmarble Games raked in more than 1.5 trillion won (US$1.32 billion) in revenue in 2016, the company said in its annual earnings report on Monday.
The Korean mobile game giant has broken the 1 trillion won revenue mark for the second consecutive year, setting another major milestone for the firm.
Netmarble’s 2016 operating profit reached 295.4 billion won, up 31.3 percent on-year, while its revenue for the year reached around 1.51 trillion won, up 40.4 percent from the previous year.
Around 51 percent of the company’s revenue last year was generated overseas, marking a great jump from a portion of 28 percent in 2015 and 17 percent in 2014.
Netmarble credited its stellar performance last year to the global success of its leading mobile games such as “Seven Knights,” “Everyone’s Marble,” “Stone Age” as well as the unprecedented popularity of “Lineage II: Revolution” in the fourth quarter.
Spearheading Netmarble's earnings was “Lineage II: Revolution” — a mobile RPG based on the storyline and characters of NCSoft’s famed PC game “Lineage.” The game racked up more than 100 billion won in sales in Korea in just two weeks of its release on Dec. 14.
Moreover, “Seven Knights” retained its popularity in Japan in the fourth quarter, where the game had ranked No. 3 in terms of in-app sales on the Apple app store, Netmarble said.
“We have been continuing to work diligently to reap global success in target markets including the US, China and Japan. And the outcomes of such efforts have begun to show,” said Netmarble Games CEO Kwon Young-sik said in a statement.
“This year, we will focus on building further meaningful progress by actively competing against global major game companies,” Kwon said.
Netmarble is preparing to introduce various new mobile games in the near future, including “Blade & Sou,” “Tera,” “King of Fighters” “G.I. Joe” as well as MMORPG renditions of “Seven Knights” and “Stone Age,” among others.