Nexon has recently unleashed their popular MORPG Dungeon Fighter for iOS devices. Known as Dungeon & Fighter in all territories other than North America, The title is one of Nexon’s hottest properties, with over 200 million registered users, and now available for play on the go.
According to Nexon, the Dungeon & Fighter Slayer Edition is optimized for all iOS devices, and created by Neople, a fully owned subsidiary of Nexon. While this might be a “special edition” of Dungeon & Fighter, Nexon has taken the higher road, and is not pushing a watered down version of the title, but rather, has included a plethora of content not found on other versions of the game. Content includes Ancient Dungeons, as well as a playable Mage class to name a few. Neople/Nexon have also taken advantage of the unique interface offered by iOS devices, as players now have access to a pinch and zoom in/out of the mini-map, as well as use on screen directional keys for movement. The title still retains it’s long standing side-scrolling game play, a mechanic players have come to love and expect from Nexon.
“The iOS release of Dungeon & Fighter Slayer Edition represents a significant step forward for the Dungeon & Fighter franchise,” said Hyun-Jong Kim from Nexon Mobile in a statement. “Both longstanding fans of the franchise and new players alike will now be able to take the enthralling action of the Dungeon & Fighter universe with them on the go.”
Now if this were any other company offering yet another version of a title, I’d promptly yawn and move on. However, this is Nexon we’re talking about here. If you’re not familiar with Nexon, in a nutshell, if you like free-to-play, or paying for bits and pieces as you go, aka microtransactions, you’ve got respect to pay. While certainly not on the level of Apple, it’s fair to say that Nexon has done for games what Apple via iTunes did for music. I’ll explain:
Apple started a revolutionary program and idea with the advent of the iTunes store. It provided a safe and legitimate mechanism whereby users could pay for what they want, and download it directly to their computer. Not coming from the exact same starting point, Nexon sought to put games piracy to bed, once and for all. Their logic? Let the games loose for free, and then charge users for what they want along the way; be that a sword or potion here, or a map or additional levels there. For the longest time Nexon pushed this business model, and is not reaping the rewards. However, this was primarily browser based gaming via Nexon’s portal only.
Within the past week, we’ve seen Nexon port KartRider and their long standing flagship MapleStory over to both iOS devices and Facebook (and other social networks), as well as lead a financing round for a promising social games development house, A Bit Lucky. It’s a fair statement to make that something is definitely afoot at Nexon. With that said, Nexon is still at the pivot point, meaning, they’re now bringing their popular titles over into the social/mobile world. I see this as phase one of a much larger plan in the works. Once Nexon is settled and established in this playfield and worked out all the kinks, I believe this will be the time when we see Nexon’s investment in A Bit Lucky start to pay off, as the firm will undoubtedly produce Nexon’s next “big hit.”
Only time will tell, but it might be time to keep a closer eye on what Nexon’s up to, as Q1 is rapidly coming to a close. Next phase? My money’s on a Q4 ’11 release, just in time to take full advantage of the upcoming iOS, and most probably Phone 5.
The new DFC Intelligence report pegs the current English language market at around $250 million. Based on growth and consumer patterns DFC sees this number likely to balloon to $2 billion in just 5 years. Primary factors driving these numbers arrive via a maturity of the f2p industry as a whole (i.e. higher quality products arriving on English speaking shores), as well as overall gamer perception that Free-to-Play doesn’t mean any less of a quality gaming experience.
Changyou reports that this $77.7 million is a record setting performance quarter, alos indicating an 8 percent annual revenues growth when compared to 2009. This figure is also on the high end of the group’s estimates. If their crystal ball holds true, the company is projecting an increase, up to $80-$83 million in Q3 2010 revenues.
We all knew that it was going to take a big leap of faith from a major studio to put the seal of approval on the whole shebang. And while it might not have been EA to come out and introduce free-to-play to North America, but a number of smaller firms took note, adopted the model, and started to watch a decent ROI roll in. Fast forward 18 months or so later, and suddenly, we’ve found our free-to-play flagship in Turbine. When Turbine decided to cut the flailing Dungeons and Dragons Online free from the subscription model, they had two choices, shut it all down, or…reinvent the game in a free-to-play/premium subscription hybrid model. We all know how that story went. Dungeons and Dragons Online has seen a massive resurgence, and lining the Turbine coffers nicely. So well, that the company decided to mimic the same model with their flagship property: Lord of the Rings Online (which goes f2p this coming fall).
GamersFirst announced that they’re making their first Mac title available: Taikodom: Living Universe. Developed by Brazilian studio 
Previously based on a subscription model, LotRO can be seen as a viable competitor to Blizzard’s king-of-the-hill MMORPG, World of Warcraft, often involving players in similar, if yet different, gameplay and quest lines, series of play. Turbine’s Lord of the Rings Online has won multiple awards, involving players in a rich adventure featuring a massive world of up-to-the-minute graphics and game mechanics. Naturally, as a former subscription based game, LoTRO also includes all the premium features that paying gamers have come to expect over recent history.
This past January, the NPD Group surveyed 19,000 online gamers and found that around 30 percent are regular WoW players, thus crowning the title king of online games (again). Around 10 percent of those surveyed indicated that they’re regular RuneScape players. According to 
“Our original seven day trial has been very successful so far,” says Morten Larssen, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Funcom. “But with the holiday season coming up this is the perfect time to shake up our trial offer a bit and try out something new. So everyone who downloads the trial before January 1st will be able to play the first part of the game for free, forever. We are confident that many of those taking advantage of this offer will choose to become permanent players, allowing them to experience all of what the game has to offer including all the additions and improvements introduced since launch.”
Announced on the 
