SEOUL, KOREA – The accumulated sales of Aion: The Tower of Eternity, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) released by NCsoft, have surpassed the KRW one million threshold in four years and two months. Its profitability is much higher than that of Korea’s flagship export goods like cars, TVs and smartphones. Indeed, a well-made video game can generate as much high value-addedness as Korea’s other mainstay export items.
According to NCsoft, Aion had raked in about KRW 990 billion as of the end of last year, with over KRW 250 billion in annual sales from 2009 to 2011 and over KRW 170 billion in 2012.
For the past four years, Aion is estimated to have grossed at least KRW 750 billion in revenue. It is difficult to make a game catch on, but once it is on track, it guarantees a tremendous amount of revenue: Aion’s sales are 40 times higher than its production cost of KRW 25 billion.
Aion’s four-year operating profit of KRW 750 billion equals what companies can make by selling 304,252 Sonata cars, 3,771,116 Galaxy S3 units and 24,990,000 40-inch 3D smart TVs.
Sean Chung (hbpark@etnews.com)
**Article provided by etnews [Korea IT News]
[Reference] : http://english.etnews.com/electronics/2715655_1303.html
