NEXON to join venture with China game firm

Executives from NEXON and Perfect World Co. pose after announcing a plan to set up a joint venture on Thursday. (NEXON)

BUSAN ― NEXON announced Thursday that it will set up a joint venture in Korea with Chinese online game developer Perfect World Co.

NGL, an abbreviation of Next Game Life, will be headed by NEXON’s Cho Sung-won and will be given priority when choosing among a pool of the Chinese developer’s games to service, Cho said at a press conference held on the sidelines of G-Star 2011.

“NGL will be in charge of localizing the contents of games chosen to release by NEXON along with its operations and customer services,” he said.

The first two games that will be released in the Korean market are Perfect World’s already-popular 3-D massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) “Forsaken World” and “Swords Man,” based on a martial arts novel.

“The first title to be unveiled through the new joint venture is ‘Forsaken World’ and it is scheduled to go public by the latter half of next year,” said Cho.

Noting that the partnership will be limited to providing services in Korea for the moment, Cho said the key aim of the joint venture is to successfully convey the needs of Korean users to the game developing team.

Zhu Qi, senior vice president of Perfect World, said the Chinese firm will set up a support organization in China and dispatch a competitive team of developers to NGL.

“We’ve put an emphasis on the Korea online game market in the past and we believe it’s one of the most advanced markets,” Zhu said. “The most critical point in entering the Korean market is the quality of the game and we aim to give the most satisfying games that come in a variety of choices.”

By Cho Ji-hyun (sharon@heraldm.com)