Neowiz

Neowiz is a South Korean video game developer and publisher. The company was founded in 1997 by Sung Kyun Na. In 2007, a corporate restructuring resulted in the creation of Neowiz Holdings, which became the parent company overseeing various subsidiaries, including the gaming business. In 2017, the gaming division was rebranded as Neowiz. The company is best known for the DJMax series and Lies of P.

History

Neowiz was founded in 1997 by 8 friends,[2] including current Chairman of the Board Na Sung Kyun and Chang Byung Gyu, both graduates of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.[3][4] The name is a combination of the words "new" (neo) and "wizard" (wiz).[5] The company started off as an internet content provider by developing LiveCAST, a service that delivered customizable information (e.g. news, weather, etc.) to its subscribers online.[2] Neowiz was not able to secure enough subscribers to maintain profitability due to the lack of affordable and simple internet access. However, it was able to stay afloat by providing software development services to internet service providers in Korea and Europe.[2]

Neowiz recognized that it was too difficult for end users to set up an internet connection and thus launched OneClick, a service allowing users to connect to the internet with one click, in April 1998. OneClick allowed users to "connect to the internet directly with one click" and users were charged according to the duration of their connection.[3] While the product initially helped them gain widespread recognition, demand for OneClick began to decline in 2000, due to the spread of high-speed broadband internet access. In 2000, OneClick's revenue contribution was around 90%, but dropped below 12% in 2002.[2]

Neowiz realized that with the rise of broadband internet access and the decline of OneClick's profits, it would need a new product. Therefore the company launched SayClub, an online community site with real-time communication, in July 1999.[3] Within 3 months SayClub was able to attract 1 million users and within a year this number grew to 3 million. The service was free to use and revenue from advertisements was not able to cover the expenses. To make SayClub profitable, Neowiz thus introduced avatars in November 2000. Users could purchase clothes and accessories with money to personalize their virtual characters. This feature was an instant success and generated sales of more than $330,000 in the first month.[2] In June 2000, Neowiz was listed on KOSDAQ.[6]

As the market of online communities became saturated and the increasing popularity of digital cameras pushed users to portray themselves with their own photographs, Neowiz once again had to come up with a new business idea. It carried out a survey on SayClub to gather user feedback on desired new features and found out that the users wanted "more fun". Thus, Neowiz added board games to SayClub in 2002 after acquiring the game development company MCUBE in September 2001. In August 2003, it launched pmang, a new platform specifically for video games. By November of the same year, pmang was the most visited game portal in Korea, due to a large scale marketing campaign online and offline.[3] By 2007 pmang offered 23 tabletop games, like poker and mahjong, and 16 advanced casual games and MMORPGs, with more than 30 games in development.[5]

When CEO Sung Kyun Na came back to Neowiz after completing his military service in March 2005, he reorganized the company to focus on video games. In April 2006, Neowiz Japan, a new Japanese subsidiary, was opened and launched a game portal named Gamechu.[3] In the same year, Neowiz also acquired the rhythm game developer Pentavision.[7] In April 2007, the company was converted into a holding company, was renamed to Neowiz Holdings and was segmented into three entities: Neowiz Games Corporation which would focus on the development and publishing of video games, Neowiz Internet Corporation which would concentrate on the Internet business including SayClub and Neowiz Invest Corporation which would participate in both local and international investments. In July 2007, Neowiz Games Corporation was listed on KOSDAQ.[8] In the same year, it acquired the Japanese video game developer GameOn.[9] In March 2017, Neowiz Games Corporation was renamed to Neowiz.[10][11]

Around 2015, Neowiz started developing and publishing for home consoles and Steam, but their main focus in the late 2010s and early 2020s was on smartphone games: It acquired multiple developers of smartphone games[9][12] and also launched their own games on the mobile platforms.[9] With the development of Lies of P, which started around 2020,[13] Neowiz started to shift their focus to console and PC titles and as of 2024, more than 80% of their games are for those platforms.[9] Co-CEO Kim Seungcheol described Lies of P as a "major pivot in the company's overall direction" that enabled them to concentrate on "building franchises that have strong intellectual property".[14]

In November 2023, Neowiz spent $17 million to acquire a 21% stake in BLANK., a video game development studio founded by former CD Projekt Red employees.[15]

Games

External links