April 26, 2024

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[THE INVESTOR] Korean video game company Pearl Abyss officially released its latest open-world mobile role-playing game “Black Desert Mobile” in Korea on Feb. 28, with servers crashing due to user traffic overload.

“Black Desert M” is a mobile remake of the hit massively multiplayer online role-playing game “Black Desert” by Pearl Abyss. The original game was launched in December 2014, and has more than 8.5 million registered users worldwide, including those in Asia as well as the US and Europe.

 

Prior to the official release, “Black Desert M” had garnered more than 5 million preregistrations, the second-highest for a mobile game in the country after “Lineage M.” It had raised anticipation that the game would become one of the most successful mobile games to be launched in Korea this year.

“The game may rank first or second by domestic gross sales in the initial phase of its launch. We assume daily average sales of 2 billion won ($1.86 million) for the first month and 1 billion won for the second quarter of 2018,” said Shinhan Investment Corp. analyst Lee Moon-jong in a note.

However, anticipation for the new mobile game was dampened due to server issues on the day of its launch. Pearl Abyss had to delay the official release time by around an hour due to registration issues.

Even after the game officially went into service, server errors prompted the developer to temporarily shut down the game to fix the issues, prompting complaints from users. As of Feb. 28 afternoon, users were still unable to log in.

Looking ahead, Pearl Abyss is planning to launch a console version of “Black Desert” on Microsoft’s console game platform Xbox in the first half of 2018, targeting mainly the North American and European markets.

By Sohn Ji-young/The Korea Herald (jys@heraldcorp.com)