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Combined first-half overseas sales of 6.06 trillion won equal about three quarters of last year's full-year total. The sequential math and the currency line say more than the headline share does.
The Investor · Invest desk
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Subtract the first half of last year from last year's total and you get the half that came immediately before this one: overseas revenue of 4.16 trillion won [17]. Measured against that, 6.06 trillion won is a 45.7% gain in six months [18], and holding the pace would put the group at 12.12 trillion won for the year, 52% above last year [22]. Premium PC and console titles do not sell their launch month twice, and Crimson Desert's 6 million cumulative units sit inside this half's number [8]. The same analysis also says the half equals 80% of last year's full-year overseas revenue, while the two figures it supplies divide out to 76% [26].
Then the currency. Converting 6.06 trillion won at the stated $4.1 billion implies roughly 1,478 won to the dollar [21], and a weak won shows up in two places at once. Netmarble and Krafton, which took foreign-operations translation losses a year ago, recognised gains this time [9]. Those gains come to 286 billion won together, equal to 12.7% of the 2.26 trillion won increase in overseas revenue [20][19]. They are not sales and they sit on a different line, but they move with the same rate, and they move back when it does.
The distribution mechanism is real enough. Steam, PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch give direct paths to players in North America and Europe, and simultaneous worldwide launches have become standard [15]. Investment has followed, out of MMORPGs and into shooters, extraction games and open-world action that Western players already know how to buy [16]. Kim Jung-tae, a game studies professor at Dongyang University, describes the push more plainly than the growth rate does: the domestic mobile MMORPG model built around probability-based items has hit its limits, with user fatigue and tighter regulation [10], and the revenue map is being redrawn around companies with results on global Steam and console marketplaces, as PUBG had [11]. That is as much a story about the old business running out of room as about the new one working.
What the new one buys is duration. Nexon's Nakwon: Last Paradise and Krafton's Tarae: Unbound are heavy-budget, long-cycle projects [12]. Neowiz got there first with Lies of P in 2023, the first Korean title past several million units in global cumulative sales, and intends to build a long-term franchise around it [14]. The corollary is that company-level shares swing on single releases: Nexon is back above 50% overseas largely on Arc Raiders in North America and Europe [6]. Six months like this is a result. It is not yet a structure.
Ranked by verification strength, evidence, and original report placement.
An analysis by The Seoul Economic Daily of earnings at Nexon, Krafton, Netmarble, NCSoft and Pearl Abyss found their average share of overseas revenue topped 70% in the first half of this year for the first time.
The five companies' average overseas revenue share had stayed in the mid- to high-60% range since 2021.
Combined overseas revenue at the five companies reached 6.06 trillion won ($4.1 billion) in the first half, up nearly 60% from 3.80 trillion won a year earlier.
Nexon, NCSoft and Pearl Abyss each raised their overseas revenue share by roughly 10 percentage points from a year earlier.
Nexon returned to an overseas share above 50% on the strength of Arc Raiders in North America and Europe.
NCSoft's Western results improved after it consolidated Just Play, a European mobile casual game platform company, lifting its quarterly overseas share above 50% for the first time since the fourth quarter of 2012.
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Evidence-backed comparisons of source perspectives and observed adoption signals. Read the methodology
Which Builder, Operator, and Investor concerns the observed source mix emphasized—not a truth score.
Evidence, demonstrated adoption, hype gap, incentives, and confidence are assessed independently, each on its own current evidence. How these are measured.
One outlet's own aggregation, with an internal arithmetic slip
All figures come from a single publisher that also performed the underlying earnings analysis; no filings, company statements or second outlet are supplied for verification. The core numbers are specific and internally traceable (3.80 to 6.06 trillion won, 7.96 trillion won base, named translation gains), which supports the direction of travel, but the article's own '80% of last year's total' does not reconcile with its stated inputs (76%), and the softest assertions — the genre reallocation of investment — carry no quantification.
Booked revenue and unit milestones, concentrated in a few titles
Adoption here is commercial rather than technical and is unusually concrete: 6.06 trillion won of realised overseas revenue, per-company share thresholds crossed at Nexon, NCSoft, Pearl Abyss and Krafton, Crimson Desert past 6 million units, Lies of P at several million, plus a completed acquisition consolidation. It is not higher because the uplift traces to a small number of recent launches and one consolidation rather than a broad base, and per-company revenue detail behind the 70% average is not disclosed.
Growth framing runs ahead of the disclosed composition
The article leads with '70% overseas' and 'last year's total in six months', but its own disclosures temper both: the ratio is 76% not 80%, the sequential gain over the implied 4.16 trillion won prior half is 45.7% rather than the 60% year-on-year headline, and 286.0 billion won of currency translation gains supply roughly an eighth of the year-on-year increase. The gap is moderate rather than large because the underlying revenue and unit figures are real and disclosed in the same piece.
Company-reported figures relayed by the outlet that authored the analysis
The numbers originate with the publishers' own earnings reporting and reach readers through the outlet's self-branded analysis, so both the framing and the inputs sit with interested parties; the supporting commentary mixes a named academic with an unnamed 'industry official'. Incentives are mid-range rather than high because the article also discloses inconvenient items — prior-year translation losses, the roughly 1% domestic growth, no major publisher confirmed for Gstar — that a purely promotional account would omit.
Directionally solid, single-sourced, arithmetic partly self-inconsistent
Confidence reflects specific, internally consistent revenue and milestone figures pointing one way, offset by total dependence on one outlet's unverified aggregation, one demonstrable ratio error, and no per-company breakdown to test the group average or the durability of launch-driven gains.
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en.sedaily.com
1 article · August 25, 2026