Wemade Dominates Market with WEMIX
Q4 Revenue Soars 7-Fold Last Year
"100 Releases This Year... No Competitors Expected"
Netmarble and Com2uS Holdings Enter Market
Game Launch After Cryptocurrency Listing Next Month
NCSoft and Krafton Prepare NFT Games
[Asia Economy Reporter Seungjin Lee] The competition for blockchain platforms, regarded as a new growth engine in the gaming industry, is intensifying. In March, major domestic game companies will launch platform services, while Wemade, which started its business early, plans to focus all efforts on building a platform ecosystem to secure market dominance.
Jang Hyun-guk: "No Threatening Competitors"
According to the gaming industry on the 17th, Wemade is the leading domestic game company in the blockchain platform business. Wemade introduced the blockchain platform ‘Wemix’ in 2019. The blockchain game ‘Mir4’, released in November of the following year, has risen as a global hit, launching services 2 to 3 years ahead of competitors.
The performance of the Wemix platform is also rapidly increasing. In the fourth quarter of last year, Wemix platform revenue surged about sevenfold from 520 million KRW in the previous quarter to 3.67 billion KRW. In particular, the monthly average active users (MAU) of the cryptocurrency wallet ‘Wemix Wallet’ reached 1.8 million, growing 832% compared to the previous quarter. The total transaction amount of its decentralized exchange ‘Wemix DEX’ increased by 826% to 270 million USD (approximately 322.9 billion KRW) compared to the previous quarter.
Wemade CEO Jang Hyun-guk said at a press conference on the 16th, "Even if competitors achieve their (blockchain platform) plans by the end of the year, it is hard to imagine us losing. Even if other companies achieve their business plans, Wemix’s position will remain dominant." CEO Jang added, "There is no change in the idea that we will release 100 games this year and become an open platform to secure market dominance," and "We plan to provide onboarding opportunities for most games."
March, Blockchain Platform War
In March, Netmarble and Com2uS Holdings will list cryptocurrencies that will serve as the base currency for their blockchain platforms. They plan to release their first blockchain games within a month after listing, and blockchain games are expected to be serviced globally as early as April. In particular, both companies plan to launch blockchain games based on intellectual property (IP) that is popular domestically and internationally. Netmarble will showcase six blockchain games, including ‘A3: Still Alive’ Global and ‘Modoo Marble: Meta World’. Com2uS and Com2uS Holdings are preparing more than 16 titles based on their own blockchain platform C2X.
Kakao Games, which entered the ‘1 trillion KRW club’ last year, is building an ecosystem using its own coin ‘BORA’. Kakao Games renamed its subsidiary Friends Games to ‘MetaBORA’ and announced plans to strengthen blockchain-based game and entertainment businesses. The number of blockchain games scheduled for release this year is about ten, with services expected to be fully launched from the second quarter.
Krafton, NCSoft, and LINE Games are focusing on the non-fungible token (NFT) sector. NCSoft plans to concentrate on games incorporating NFTs in Western markets in the third quarter of this year. LINE Games is developing NFT-based games by applying blockchain technology to existing services and upcoming new titles. Krafton plans to promote a project to build and operate a user-created NFT metaverse (extended virtual world) platform.
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