Nexon’s Combat Arms Reaches 2M Users

Today Nexon announced that its free-to-play FPS Combat Arms had reached the two million registered users milestone. It was only three months ago that Nexon announced Combat Arms had reached the one million registered users milestone. Since the game launched in October 2008 in North America, its first million users were likely registered within roughly a month's time.

“Combat Arms really hits the mark with core FPS veterans playing
alongside casual gamers.  This latest milestone is further evidence
North American gamers want to play high quality, free-to-play games,” said Nexon VP of Marketing Min Kim.

The rapid growth in registered users for Combat Arms was probably driven at least in part by Nexon's robust support of the game. Additional content has been uploaded very regularly to the title in the three months since it reached the 1 million milestone, including three additional maps and several additional modes of play that were available to non-paying customers. This level of support is unusual even for a subscription-supported game.

Nexon monetizes Combat Arms through The Black Market, the game's microtransaction item shop. Because Combat Arms is a multiplayer FPS the game is balanced such that the Black Market items don't confer an advantage upon a player who spends lots of money. Instead users primarily pay to customize their in-game appearance and to obtain the Elite Moderator item that allows individual players to host fully moderated games.

“With a host of interactive features and modes set in a completely
free-to-play environment, Combat Arms is truly a leader in the online
first-person-shooter genre and offers a one-of-a-kind gaming
experience,” said Herb Yang, Managing Producer of Combat Arms. “As we
celebrate, we are also looking forward to further shaping Combat Arms
into a title that sets the tone for a whole generation of online FPS
titles.”

Free-to-play, item-supported FPS games have already proven their ability to be a financial success in Korea, where the similar Special Forces game is popular. Electronic Arts has been working at getting the online microtransaction FPS Battlefield Heroes game live since last summer, but infrastructure-driven delays may have given Nexon time to gain control of the marketplace. Of course, Nexon's Korean operators and designers are quite familiar with the type of virtual goods model they're working with in Combat Arms, while Battlefield Heroes is being produced by primarily by the developer that created the console iterations of the Battlefield franchise.

It's hard to tell where the apparent success of Combat Arms fits in for Nexon overall. Just a few weeks ago Nexon closed down their Vancouver studio as part of a cost-cutting measure. This indicates the free-to-play model is clearly not immune to the general ongoing downturn in the games industry. While the Vancouver studio wasn't working on extant titles, like Combat Arms or MapleStory, the question of how much Nexon can expand during the next year remains.

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