Netmarble to launch 3 new games in H2

Netmarble announced Thursday that it will launch three new titles in the second half of this year as the South Korean mobile game giant seeks a turnaround after five consecutive quarters of operating losses.

The three games slated to be released in the upcoming months are Tower Of God: New World, Grand Cross: Age of Titans and Seven Knights Idle Adventure.

“The three games we are introducing today each have an easy level of gameplay as well as immersive storylines that were fully created on the basis of each (intellectual property)," said Netmarble CEO Kwon Young-sig in a media showcase held at the game developer’s headquarters in Seoul.

“We expect (the games) to score good performances in the global market with their low entry barriers, vivid animation-like production and excellent strategic aspects.”

Tower Of God: New World is a hero-collecting role-playing game based on South Korea’s megahit webtoon Tower of God, which is a fantasy story of a boy who enters a mysterious tower to chase after a girl.

The webtoon began publication on the country’s popular search engine Naver in July 2010, recording over 6 billion views worldwide so far. According to Netmarble, the webtoon-based game will be launched as a mobile game across the globe in July as the company plans to release a PC version of the game as well.

Grand Cross: Age of Titans will be the first game based on Netmarble F&C’s self-developed intellectual property. The storyline describes two main characters falling into another dimension to save an endangered kingdom with other heroes.

“Grand Cross is an original intellectual property that Netmarble F&C has worked on for a while. We plan to expand (the IP) to not only webtoon and webnovel, but also drama and film,” said Seo Woo-won, CEO of Netmarble F&C, a subsidiary of Netmarble.

The massively multiplayer online real-time strategy game, or MMORTS, will have various modes, such as player versus in-game monsters, player versus player and alliance wars that involve a lot of players battling to take over a server. The game is scheduled to be launched globally in August for both mobile and PC.

Seven Knights Idle Adventure will look to continue the success story of the game maker’s popular longtime franchise Seven Knights. Kim Jeong-min, CEO of Netmarble Nexus, another subsidiary of Netmarble, said the latest Seven Knights title will look to expand the idle gaming market, which has recently seen sharp growth in South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and the US. An idle game is a game that progresses with little to zero control from the player. The mobile game will be released in the global market in September.