 |
| Industry | Video game developer |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1994 |
| Headquarters | Santa Clara, California |
| Website | http://www.kru.com/ |
Kru Interactive (spun off from Nexon Co., Ltd) is a company that operates and manages online gaming and MMORPGs. Its headquarters is located in Santa Clara, California.
The South Korea-based game company made a name for itself in the early 1990s. Nexon launched Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds in 1997, Dark Ages in 1999. Shattered Galaxy, the award winning and first massive online RTS game, was introduced in 2001. The company has recently expanded into other Asian countries, notably Japan, Malaysia, and Singapore; along with the United States. For a short time, Shattered Galaxy was sold in stores in the United States but never sold well because it was offered for free in a long-term open beta and then made available as a pay for play, only four months after commercial launch, from the Shattered Galaxy website. Shattered Galaxy has also been awarded the Seumas McNally Grand Prize, Audience Choice Awards, Technical Excellence Award, and Best Game Design at the 2001 Independent Games Festival Awards.
Nexon has also released a few unsuccessful games to the North American audience in beta form which have since been dropped. They include Elemental Saga, QuizQuiz and Elancia. QuizQuiz never left beta stage in North America but was later released through the Singapore division of Nexon, NexonAsia in an English version. QuizQuiz has since evolved into the exclusively Korean and Japanese online game Q-Play, while Elemental Saga was eventually cancelled. NEXON has several games exclusively available to Korean players such as Elancia and Crazy Arcade.
Shattered Galaxy is a massively multiplayer online real-time strategy game (MMORTS) that was released in 2001 by KRU Interactive., now known as Nexon Inc, after an extensive open beta period. In the US, it was published by Tri Synergy. It combines the attributes of a massive multiplayer online role-playing game and a real-time strategy game. Having won the Seumas McNally Grand Prize at the 2001 Independent Games Festival and hosted through the Game Developers Conference, the game has been commercially unsuccessful due in large part to its dated graphics engine. The game was published under the name Tactical Commanders in South Korea, published by Nexon until December 31, 2005. This game has also been serviced in Japan, Taiwan, and Germany.
Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds is a pay to play massively multiplayer online role-playing game Nexus began as a US version of the Korean game 바람의 나라 developed by Nexon Inc., and is loosely based on Korean mythology and on a series of graphic novels by an artist named Kim Jin. Development of Baram began in Korea in 1994 and the game was released on April 5, 1996. One year later, it also entered beta in the United States, going commercial in 1998. In 2005, the US subsidiary of Nexon changed its name to Kru Interactive and took over running Nexus, Dark Ages, and Shattered Galaxy as an independent company.
QuizQuiz, also known as Quiz Quiz, was a massively multiplayer online (MMO) quiz video game created by Nexon which used a super deformed type anime graphical style to portray the players and the few environments or non-player characters (NPCs) it contained. The game was released as a free beta download off of the Nexon Inc. website but was later discontinued in North America due to low playerbase. Released in 1999, it was one of the first free-to-play games using a microtransaction revenue model. The game remained available in South Korea, Japan, and Singapore but the Singapore and Japan servers were later shut down as well in December 2004.
Wizet is a video game development studio located in Seoul, South Korea. They reached commercial success with their hit game MapleStory and were absorbed into their publishing company, Nexon. Nexon developed a franchise system and expanded its services to Japan, China, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, the United States, Europe, Brazil, and Vietnam. Eventually, Wizet reached the global world after having finished developing key features of MapleStory.
Asphere Innovations is a tech holding company and an online game operator under Playpark in Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia. Its headquarters is located in Bangkok, Thailand. Asphere's services are primarily operated within Southeast Asia.
Dungeon Fighter Online, known in South Korea as Dungeon & Fighter, is a multiplayer beat 'em up action role-playing game, developed and published for personal computers by Neople, a South Korean subsidiary of Nexon, and originally published by Hangame in 2005. The game was originally released in South Korea as Dungeon & Fighter, then in Japan as Arad Senki, and then published in China by Tencent. A global version of Dungeon Fighter Online was released in May 2015.
Nexon Co., Ltd. is a South Korean video game publisher. It publishes titles including MapleStory, Dungeon & Fighter, Sudden Attack, and KartRider. Headquartered in Japan, the company has offices in South Korea, the United States, Taiwan and Thailand.
Counter-Strike Online (CSO) is a tactical first-person shooter video game, targeted towards Asia's gaming market released in 2008. It is based on Counter-Strike and was developed by Nexon with oversight from license-holder Valve. It uses a micropayment model that is managed by a custom version of Steam.
Combat Arms: Reloaded & Combat Arms: Classic is a free-to-play multiplayer first-person shooter game developed by Nexon and published by VALOFE outside of Korea. The game uses the LithTech game engine to produce its graphics. In July 2012, Combat Arms was also released on Steam.
Dragon Saga, called Dragonica before 2010, is a free-to-play 3D side-scrolling massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by Barunson Interactive and Gravity Interactive. Development has been ongoing since March 2006. Operation of Dragon Saga is relegated to different publishers for their respective regions. Whilst being free-to-play, the game also includes a cash shop that allows for unique customization of player's characters. The game's commercial launch was in June 2009 in China and October in Europe and October 2010 in North America. Characters created during the open beta testing were carried over to the commercial release.
Atlantica Online is a free-to-play (F2P) 3D tactical massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed by NDOORS Corporation. The game is currently published by Valofe. The game's primary setting is a fantasy-themed alternate history Earth composed of a diverse blend of historical, cultural, allegorical, and mythological elements. The game world is primarily modeled after real-world geography with accessible locations on six of the seven continents as well as the mythical floating continent of Atlantis from which the game's name is derived.
Vindictus is a free-to-play massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) created by devCAT, an internal studio of Nexon. The story follows the player character joining a group of mercenaries and going on a series of missions to battle monsters. The gameplay has players exploring dungeons, fighting monsters, and upgrading their characters.
NDOORS Corporation is a Korean gaming corporation and developer of online games and MMORPGs and is a subsidiary of one of the world's largest online gaming companies, Nexon. Its headquarters are located in Seoul, South Korea. NDOORS Corporation first started out as "Intizen co., Ltd" in September 1999, but later changed their name in October 2004 to "Ndoors Corporation." On January 18, 2006, NDOORS Corporation took over Koong Entertainment which meant that NDOORS not only would be able to create PC Games, but PSP2 and PSP console games as well. The current CEO of NDOORS Corporation is Cho, SeongWon. The NDOORS logo can be simplified as "Distinction, Sympathy, and Expansion."
FIFA Online 3 is a free-to-play massively multiplayer online football game which was announced on 13 August 2012 and entered the 1st closed beta on 20 September 2012 to 23 September of that same year in South Korea. On December 18, 2012, it was released in South Korea.
Counter-Strike (CS) is a series of multiplayer tactical first-person shooter video games in which teams of terrorists battle to perpetrate an act of terror while counter-terrorists try to prevent it. The series began on Windows in 1999 with the release of the first game, Counter-Strike. It was initially released as a modification ("mod") for Half-Life that was designed by Minh "Gooseman" Le and Jess "Cliffe" Cliffe before the rights to the mod's intellectual property were acquired by Valve, the developers of Half-Life, who then turned Counter-Strike into a retail product released in 2000.
I.O. Entertainment was a South Korean-based Developer of Lost Saga and Survival Project. I.O. Entertainment's Survival Project was developed prior to November 2001, and was officially released in 2003. I.O. Entertainment's second game, Lost Saga was developed, and released independently on February 26, 2009, and continues to be updated as the source version of the game with occasional updates.
On March 24, 2011, Joymax announced the acquisition of I.O. Entertainment.
EA Sports FC Online is a series of online sports games developed by Electronic Arts (EA) based on EA Sports FC series of games. It is released with a free-to-play model with a focus on the Asian video game market. The first entry in the series was released in May 2006.
EA Sports FC Online is a free-to-play massively multiplayer online football game developed by EA Spearhead and published by Nexon, Garena and Tencent. The game was released on 17 May 2018 in South Korea, then for China, Thailand and Vietnam markets in the following month.
Blue Archive is a South Korean role-playing game developed by Nexon Games, a subsidiary of Nexon. It was released in 2021 for Android and iOS, first in Japan by Yostar and worldwide later that year by Nexon. The game is free-to-play with gacha game mechanics as a means to obtain new characters. An anime television series adaptation titled Blue Archive The Animation has been announced.
Dungeon & Fighter, sometimes abbreviated to DNF, is a series of video games created by Neople, a subsidiary of Nexon. While early games were only developed and published by Neople, Nexon began to publish other entries in the series as well as outsource the development to other companies.