Mobile Competition
Mobile community service BAND entered the mobile games market on May 12 with the opening of its mobile game channeling platform, showcasing 10 games. KakaoTalk’s gaming platform has been dominating the market so far, but a new challenger has appeared!
Camp Mobile released ten games on May 12, including WeMade Entertainment’s Ark Sphere and NHN Entertainment’s Dragon Friends.
BAND Games, which integrates a game channel into the mobile social networking service BAND, lets users download games through a link with Google Play Store or Naver’s N Store. The business model was created based on the fact that there are more users who look for influential mobile community services than the Apps market for Android. Much attention has been paid to whether or not the gaming service of BAND, which has 30 million subscribers at home and abroad, will be as successful as the KakaoTalk game platform.
Since the latter half of 2012, when KakaoTalk’s ecosystem was established, major game developers and distributors have been competing to launch their games on the app’s game business platform, Kakao Game. Major distributors have focused on securing copyright in promising mobile games under the premise that developers will forge a partnership with KakaoTalk.
With BAND unveiling its game platform, major channeling platform operators began to compete with one another, driving a power shift in the market. Recently, an increasing number of Korean mobile games have been launched on Google Play instead of channeling platforms and have become popular in the global market. Competition between channeling platform operators, who lead the distribution of mobile games, is likely to be more intense.