JUNE 28, 2012 • Looking to bolster its social mobile game development holdings, Nexon Co., Ltd. acquired all outstanding shares of inBlue,inc, which creates content for the GREE and Mobage platforms in Japan. The acquisition comes after the recent purchase of Moyasoft Co., Ltd., a Korean social game developer. Terms of the inBlue deal were not disclosed, but Nexon said the transaction will not have a material impact on its consolidated financial performance for the fiscal year 2012.
Impact: Contrary to popular believe Nexon has long been active in the mobile space via its Nexon Mobile division. Nexon Mobile was folded into Nexon earlier this year as Nexon is clearly trying to better coordinate its IP across multiple platforms. While, inBlue is a tiny company, they are experienced in Japan which is the leading market for free-to-play mobile games. Japan accounts for about 15% of Nexon’s revenues but revenue from Japan has been flat. Possibly this is because of the growth of mobile games in the country. As Nexon stated in their November 2011 prospectus, mobile phone game revenues “were not material to our consolidated revenues in the fiscal year ended December 31, 2010 and the nine months ended September 30, 2011.” Nexon clearly wants to change that.
