Netmarble announced that it has released “Blade & Soul Revolution “, a massive multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) by Cherrybugs at midnight on the 6th (UTC+9), on Google Play and Apple App Store in South Korea.
“We are making another revolutionary game in South Korea’s mobile game market…” said Director Ji-hoon Kang of Netmarble’s Business Headquarters
‘Blade & Soul Revolution’ is a mobile MMORPG born from the popular PC online game originally by NCsoft, ‘Blade & Soul’ Intellectual Property Rights (IP), to reinterpret the original world view and content. Notably, Apple’s App Store buzzed with activity the day before. The game offered pre-downloading on the 5th in the App Store, and later with Google Play, in the morning of the 6th.
The game is based on high level 3D graphics which are produced with the Unreal Engine 4. The game features high-quality cinematics using a ‘light-air system’.
To encourage new gamers and reward early loyal supporters, Netmarble is holding a variety of events. For a short time, gamers are able to earn rare equipment and limited edition items. In addition, in an effort to develop a larger fan base, Netmarble also opened an official community space for ‘Blade & Soul Revolution’. The community provides various game information such as game news, community manager content, game guides, gamer message boards.
The trend of notable titles migrating over to lighter weight mobile versions has recently gained notice (Blizzard’s Diablo and Warcraft, Bluehole’s Tera, Nintendo’s Pokemon). The decision to go mobile may be due in part with Southeast Asian development. The region now has the third largest market of internet users with an estimated 330 million users by the year’s end according to Business Insider. Most of the Southeast Asian countries appear to favor smartphone adoption over traditional PCs and laptops. This shift in internet usage may be a factor that makes handheld game development enticing within the game industry.
