CORRECTION: MapleStory is at 67 million, so (cough, cough)... corrected throughout.
(Cough!) Nexon doesn't talk as much about its player population as a lot of other game companies. As an aside in their announcement about bringing Valve Software's Counterstrike to Asia, they mentioned that their monster casual MMO, MapleStory has 67 million players worldwide(!) (see Aaron Linde's article inDestructoid). cheap maple story mesos
Thats more than SEVEN TIMES the population of Blizzard's World of Warcraft.
67 million players. Amazing.
Nexon's game's popularity is certainly related to its use of the free-to-play Virtual Asset Purchase business model.
Very few companies in the US seem to have caught on to this yet (Matt, Daniel, please do not yell at me, there are some established examples like Puzzle Pirates and Iron Realms' games, but they have had only modest success in the market). There was a good article in Next Genertion about Arena.Net's Guild Wars. I think that, ultimately, Guild Wars pricing strategy was a good idea, but is a dead end. The article by Kris Graft hints that there were design decisions driven by the business model, but, regrettably, no details were provided.
The key to business success, particularly online, is lowering cost to entry, but still having a viable revenue model.
67 million players is a lot of people to potentially get some money from. As long as the game company can keep its costs of distribution and operation low, there is a huge potential for getting a bit of money from a whole lot of folks.
By lowering the cost to entry to free, players can experiment with a game... and then by having a low cost for enhanced play, it becomes an easy decision to subscribe or buy blocks of virtual currency. cheap maple story mesos
The choice of prices are important. Buying blocks of currency or subscriptions for less than $10 means that it is an impulse buy. $50, or even $20, to buy a game is above the "whine factor" for parents. Nexon's ability to get payment cards into Target (see previous article) was critical - online game play becomes an impulse purchase at the checkout line. I think this is an area where many casual game companies "don't get it". Their prices are above the impulse purchase level (see also the excellent summary of Whon Namkoong, President of NHN USA's, presentation from the Casual Game Conference at Free to Play).
In the long term, it is likely that two models are going to dominate online gaming:
Cheap Subscriptions - less than $10 per month, preferably around $5 per month - Club Penguin and Runescape are good examples of this strategy. cheap maple story mesos
Virtual Asset Purchase games - free-to-play, pay-for-stuff games. MapleStory and other Asian games have embraced this model. I am guessing that the real innovation being brought to Counterstrike is the integration of Virtual Assets into the game design.
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