If you were hoping for some eye bleach after the financial reports from Blizzard and NCsoft yesterday, then I’m sorry – Nexon is not going to be your tincture of choice, in spite of the fact that the company had a record-high year, with record revenues and incomes that offset a weaker fourth quarter. That’s because the story has much the same result for western MMO gamers as NCsoft’s: While more than three-quarters of Nexon’s 2018 revenue came from PC games, it’s not actually planning to launch any new PC MMOs outside of the Korean market this year.
Nexon says that MapleStory and MapleStory M in particular performed well in Korea, as did Dungeon & Fighter in China (for scale: It makes almost twice as much in China as it does in Korea and twice as much in Korea as in the rest of the world).
Among the PC games Nexon is working on is Project BBQ, though we don’t know whether it’ll ever come here. The company does say it’s “preparing multiple mobile games for 2019” for the North American and European market, including Durango and Final Fantasy XI R.
MMO players will recall that Nexon’s ownership is currently attempting to sell almost the entirety of the company for its supposed value of $8B US. The South Korean company is traded on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, where its stock had a solid year, especially compared to US game companies, and is up on the news.
