Although local game companies showed mobile AR games after `Pokemon Go` launch in Korea, a mobile Augmented Reality (AR) game in January, it was not enough to catch Pokemon Go.

According to the industry on May 21, Pokemon Go has been released to the Korean market, and Korean AR games `Catchmon` (developer MGame) and `Turning Me Card Go` (1.4 Interactive) Based on Google Play game app sales on March 18). Their popularity ranking is 500th, 251th respectively. It is in contrast to Pokemon Go, which has been ranked No. 64 in sales and No. 43 in popularity though its popularity has waned since its inception. This is attributed to the fact that Pokemon Go has been overwhelmed by its preemption effect on the market, failed to provide enough attractive content to keep users in the game, and failed to update or market its products.

Turning Me Card Go, and Catchmon have been launched in February and March, respectively. This is also a location-based AR game, in which players carry a smartphone and collect characters hidden in real terrain around the player.

According to Wise app, Turning Me Card Go and Catchmon`s smartphone installations were 180,000 and 530,000, respectively. However actual users were only 90,000 and 200,000, respectively. The number of installations of Pokemon Go is 6.66 million, and the number of actual users is 3.14 million. Catchmon did not do massive updates after launch. Turning Me Card Go is an evaluation of the game players who showed 30 new turning cards and toys every week and introduced new characters. But it was not enough to attract great popularity.

On the other hand, Pokemon Go is catching up with users to update the game with a lot of character additions and events that provide free-of-charge data for games by the end of June in partnership with SK Telecom.

Meanwhile, after the Korean AR games such as Hanbit Soft and Dragonfly, which are the follower companies, plan to succeed through B2B (business-to-business) market development. Hanbit Soft is focusing on exploring the B2B market with "History Expedition AR" (history education + AR game) to be launched later this month. It has been selected as a theme game to be held at `IT theme game contest and cultural performance for three seasons of visit to Ulsan in 2017` before the launch. A company representative said, "We will partner with local governments who want to promote the region by introducing local famous products or historical hero characters from local governments."

Dragonfly which is developing `Special Pose AR` and `Tobot AR`, is planning a B2B model that attracts customers through raising event monsters in close proximity to the stores in cooperation with specific brand stores.

By Kim Soo Yeon newsnews@


[ copyright ⓒ The Digitaltimes ]