Some Maplestory Numbers

October 31, 2006 on 10:04 am | In Uncategorized, MMO (Live), Reporting

Awhile back, I had heard about Maplestory's 50 million registered accounts. While an impressive number unto itself, it's hard to know just how much money that actually means for Nexon. At least with Warcraft's numbers (and anyone else reported into MMOGcharts), we can make vague guesses.

So I took a look around and finally found some analagous numbers for Maplestory.

As reported by Jun Sok Huhh in April, based on information from the original report in Korean, the following is some highlights about the game and business.

In Korea

• The game launched in year 2003
• The number of accumulated subscribers(as of Feb. 2006) amounts to 14M.¹
• The number of concurrent users is 200K.
• The total revenue during 3 service years is 200B Won(1,000 Won = 1 USD).²
• The total revenue from licensing during 3 servicing years is 110B Won.³

Number of Subscribers

• China since Dec. 2004, 18M subscribers
• Japan since Nov. 2003, 9M subscribers
• Taiwan since Jul. 2005, 3.5M subscribers⁴
• Thailand since Oct. 2005, 550K subscribers
• Singapore/Malaysia since Oct. 2005, 550K subscribers⁵
• Global(US) since Oct. 2005, 1.5M subscribers

Some World-wide Revenue Numbers

• Monthly world-wide revenue of Feb. 2004 was 2.1B Won (US$2,232,239 today)
• Monthly world-wide revenue of Feb. 2005 was 5.0B Won (US$5,313,407 today)
• Monthly world-wide revenue of Feb. 2006 was 16B Won (US$16,997,601 today)

What is particularly impressive is that the game is free. Free to download. Free to play. Divide 16.9mil by the average monthly fee for a Western MMO of $12.95. The result? Maplestory is making as much per month as a Western MMO would collect from 1.3mil subscribers.

And how many games have broken 1.3mil subscribers? Even the newest member to that club (Second Life) only collects monthly fees from less than 3% of their playerbase (about 25,000 property owners).

Conclusion 

Considering their growth and the number of subscribers in the West, this is not a game people can really ignore just because it lacks a monthly fee and doesn't have the name "Warcraft" in it.