And the acquisitions keep on rollin’ along. Arguably the company that started the free-to-play/microtransactions revolution, Korea based Nexon Inc. has recently announced their successful acquisition of GameHi Inc.

While a number of acquisitions tend to be talent and/or technology advantage based, the Nexon acquisition is of the gobbling up of competition nature. Nexon purchased 29.3 percent of outstanding Game Hi Inc. shares, which include management rights, for $59.8 million. These rights were purchased from Gun-Il Kim, previously Game Hi Inc.’s largest shareholder. The ultimate goal for Nexon in this acquisition is to merge its online game publishing knowledge and experience with the game development capabilities of Game Hi Inc.. Ultimately, this acquisition serves to enhance Nexon’s growing influence in the freemium gaming space.

Chief executive of Nexon, Min Seo says that the two companies have a number of things in common. He believes that GameHi has proved it’s ability to create top quality titles, including Sudden Attack and Dekaron, and compares them to Nexon’s success with MapleStory, Wiznet, Dungeon Fighter Online, and Neople.

With this acquisition, it’s obvious that Nexon is committed to investing in their future. They recently reported 2009 revenues that grew from $359.7 million in 2008, to $561.5 million, a 56 percent increase. From GameHi’s side, 2009 revenues were $33.9 million, with an operating profit of $9.7 million.

As more and more gamers start and begin to invest in free-to-play titles, the ‘players’ in this field are quickly becoming ‘major players’ through acquisitions such as this one. Don’t forget, Nexon just recently acquired Korean MMO developer NDoors, and something tells me they aren’t done on their spending spree quite yet. Over the coming year, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a number of similar announcements made from those that have been around since free-to-play’s inception.