DeNA and Daum Take Mobage Partnership to the Next Level

Kyongwan Son, Daum; Ichiro Hazama, Square Enix; Steven Yang, DeNA Seoul

Some of our readers may recall last February when Japanese social gaming giant DeNA (TYO:2432), in cooperation with Korean web portal Daum (KDQ:035720), launched its Mobage gaming platform for Android in Korea. And now the past few days have seen some new developments from DeNA in its quest for the Korea market, with Daum Mobage recently launching for iOS as well.

DeNA set out with big ambitions for the Daum Mobage partnership, aiming for 10 million users by the end of this year. The company tells us today that the first half of this year has been mostly a testing period as they see what works in the Korean gaming market, and that full-scale marketing is not in effect yet. I would assume we’ll see far more regarding Daum Mobage in the second half of the year once things get rolling. But are they still on pace to hit its 10 million user milestone by year’s end? I’m told that this target remains unchanged.

In fact, today DeNA and Daum announced a new high-profile title that just might get the ball rolling in Korea. Final Fantasy Airborne Brigade will be available for Daum Mobage on Android beginning in August. According to the announcement, the Japanese Final Fantasy Brigade from which this derives is one of the most popular games for Mobage in Japan, with over 2.5 million registered users.

DeNA has high hopes for this title in Korea as the Final Fantasy franchise is quite popular there. Indeed the title is pretty popular the world over, so it will be interesting to see if it expands to other regions as well.

You can check out some screenshots for Final Fantasy Airborne Brigade below.