8 Companies Including NC Soft Opened Independent Booth

World large exhibition of games Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) opened at Los Angeles Convention Center downtown Los Angeles on the 22nd (local time).

For 3 days till 24th, 450 companies of game development and distribution from around 70 countries offered some 1,000 software. Total 60,000 persons are prospected to visit the show.

By platforms, console games make up 49 percent. And PC game (39 percent), Portable game (17.5 percent), Online game (7.8 percent), and Mobile game (3.4 percent) followed in order.

The advance of Console game machines including Play Station 2 by Sony and Xbox by Microsoft into online game market attracted most attention in the show.

The two companies opened large exhibition booths at West Hall and South Hall in the LA Convention Center, and offered `Socom` and `Football 2003, ` for which services will be launched from August first in America, attracting interests of gamers.

In the field of PC game, `Warcraft` by U.S. Blizzard Entertainment and `Final Fantasy 11` by Square Soft were most popular.

30 Korean companies also offered over 100 various games like PC game, Mobile game along with Online game.

Especially, 8 domestic companies like NC Soft, Hanbit Soft, Wizard Soft and Zio Interactive opened dependent booths competing world famous game developers.

Korea Game Development and Promotion Institute, which is managing joint booth for Korean firms forecasted that Korean companies, which are stronger in Online game, would get orders for total 17 million dollars (around 22 billion won) increasing 13 percent from last year.

Chang-Won Kim changkim@donga.com