Korean game companies losing dominance over Chinese market
by William Dobson 
Nov 27th 2007 at 8:29AM
Filed under: Economy, MMO industry, News items
PlayNoEvil posted an article in response to a story from Korean newspaper The Digital Chosunilbo, that states that Korea no longer has a stranglehold on China's online gaming market. In fact, Korea now only holds 10 percent of that market. The newspaper story is based on a report from the Korean Embassy, which found that the Chinese online game industry is now worth 10 billion yuan (greater than US$1.3 billion) and Korea's share in this delicious pie has greatly diminished. But why is this the case? The embassy thinks it is due to three things: a failure to deal with Chinese piracy, mistakenly thinking of Chinese collaborators as subcontractors rather than business partners, and the strongest reason, a lack of good new games.
PlayNoEvil adds their own fourth reason -- terrible product support -- saying that the recent coverage of game launches has been disappointing and even the Korean online gaming trade show, G-star, was passed over by some of the bigger publishers this year, and simply did not make as big a splash as it used to. So are we witnessing the demise of Korea as king of online gaming, or can they turn it all around with some excellent new titles?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Coherent said on 3:34PM 11-27-2007
The thing is, Korean games have _always_ sucked! This was fine back in the days when there was no alternative, but nowadays the state of online games is improving dramatically and providing some more serious competition.
If Korean companies are losing their dominance, I would love to see a list of formerly dominant products along with a description of the products that have displaced them. Are the new products primarily European, American, or homegrown Chinese?
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