Recently, Korea game company Shift Up released its first financial report since its listing in July this year.

According to the latest financial report, as of June 30 this year, Shift Up's revenue in the second quarter of 2024 was 65.2 billion won (about 350 million yuan), a significant increase of 65.4% year-on-year, and a new quarterly revenue for the company.

In terms of profit, Shift Up made a profit of 45.1 billion won (about 240 million yuan) in the quarter, a year-on-year increase of 49%, and a net profit of 403 won (about 215 million yuan), a year-on-year increase of 5.1%.

Among them, in addition to the evergreen mobile game "Goddess of Victory: Nikki", which contributed 58.9% of the total revenue, or 38.4 billion won (contract 207 million yuan), Shift Up's first stand-alone buyout action game "Sword Star" also made great contributions.

Shift Up said that "Sword Star" has already sold more than 1 million units in PS two months after its release, contributing 25.8 billion won (about 138 million yuan) to the company in the quarter, but not all revenue is included in Shift Up due to the sharing agreement signed with the PS store.

According to Shift Up, Sword Star "has established a large global IP" and that a follow-up PC version is in the works. At the same time, the company is also working on a cross-platform triple-A action game codenamed "Project Witches" and plans to hire about 70 developers for it.

Mobile game manufacturers, starting to move to stand-alone?

In the past two years, the success of "Sword Star" has frequently been staged in the debut of stand-alone games of mobile game manufacturers, driving more peers to pay attention to this field.

In April this year, Cyber Agent's financial report showed that "Granblue Fantasy: Relink", developed by the well-known Japanese mobile game manufacturer Cygames, sold more than 1 million copies within 11 days of release, of which 80% of sales came from other countries outside Japan. Judging from this data, according to the standards of "Sword Star", it can be regarded as a "global IP". ("Sword Star" producer Kim Hyung-tae said that "Sword Star" accounts for only 5% of the company's total sales in Korea)

Similarly, in February this year, Neowiz Games, the developer of the 2023 souls-like game Pinocchio's Lies, announced that the parent company set a new revenue record in fiscal 2023, with overall revenue growth of 24%, especially in the fourth quarter of 2023, when Pinocchio's Lies was released, and the game business revenue increased by 96%. Neowiz Games also revealed in its earnings report that it plans to launch more buyout-based single-player games for consoles and PC platforms.

According to foreign media sources, the success of products such as "Sword Star" has inspired many Korea game manufacturers to turn to PC and console single-player games, and developers such as Korean factory Round8 Studio, Shift Up and Pearl Abyss said in an interview with Game Informer that many Korea companies are actively joining this circle, and Choi Zhiyuan, director of "Pinocchio's Lies", even mentioned that he noticed at a recent exhibition that only one team of 17 student game groups is making mobile games.

Of course, "from a mobile game to a stand-alone machine", the most dazzling team and product today are none other than domestic game science and "Black Myth: Wukong", which has exceeded 10 million sales within three days of its release.

It is worth mentioning that compared with the above products, "Black Myth: Wukong" has the vast majority of local players, which has also caused a lot of controversy, but in fact, even according to 80-90% of national sales and 10-20% of sales in other regions, 100-2 million overseas game sales are enough to make Game Science's first stand-alone work proud, and can be called a "global" work by people.

In fact, we can also see that the transition from being good at mobile games to stand-alone works is not an overnight process.

Cygames had a long-term cultivation of IP before the launch of "Granblue Fantasy: Relink", "Sword Star" inherited the aesthetic choice of "Goddess of Victory: NIKKE", and "Black Myth: Wukong" inherited the theme of "God of War"... We can often find some clues in the previous works of the manufacturer.

But whether it is to further build IP, tap the blank local stand-alone market, or develop games with a "domestic feeling", I believe that works with heart will always find their own audience.

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