MMORPG.com Free Zone columnist Richard Aihoshi focuses this week's column on one of the biggest players in the F2P market, Nexon and its recent acquisition of NDoors.
While it may sometimes feel like all the action in the free to play space is happening in China, that's not the case. There's plenty going on elsewhere too, including here in the western hemisphere. But during the past week or so, my main focus was on Korea, and specifically on Nexon, which is continuing its aggressive push to become an even larger online publisher. The company is definitely one of the heavyweights in the category already. Global revenue grew 30 percent last year to more than $535 million, of which two-thirds came from outside the country.
Early last week, Nexon revealed the acquisition of 67 percent of Ndoors, the developer and publisher of Atlantica Online. The announcement I saw did not state whether the deal has actually been finalized by clearing any the regulatory requirements or other potential hurdles. In fact, it was rather confusing in that it said "acquired" in one spot and "will acquire" in another. Curiously, while I only took a quick look, I spotted nothing about this on either company's website.
In any case, it seems Ndoors will now operate as a Nexon subsidiary. Although the price paid was not revealed, there has been speculation it may have been as much as 200 billion won (approx. $170 million US). This seems possible since it would be neither cheap nor out of line relative to the former's 2009 sales and profit of 40.5 billion won and 15.6 billion won respectively.
Read Nexon Making More Major Moves.
