G-Star 2009 Preview

G-Star 2009 announced the confirmed game publishers participating in the largest Korean game festival.  G-Star will be held at BEXCO in Busan, Korea on November 26 ~ 29. Blizzard Entertainment and MGame are participating for the first time this year, while other participants that return including major Korean game publishers such as NHN, Nexon, NCsoft, Neowiz Games, CJ Internet and WeMade Entertainment. 

NCsoft, Neowiz Games and Nexon plan to create their booths to display new games offering plenty of eye-catchers. 

■ BEXCO of Busan to Host G-Star 2009

This year, the G-Star is held in BEXCO of a harbor city, Busan, 5 hour away from Seoul instead of KINTEX in Ilsan where all the previous G-Star events took place.  BEXCO is a specialized exhibition center located in Centum-city, Busan’s largest multi-functional city combining IT, media, entertainment and shopping.  It is considered the optimal showroom space for visitors, companies and buyers thanks to multiple five-star hotels and recreational & shopping facilities within its vicinity. 

The G-Star 2009 will build facilities such as the contents sector PR hall, next-generation game PR hall, job fair center and online game genre showroom. In addition, the online game genre showroom with four themes (MMORPG, FPS, action and casual zones) will be available for small and medium game publishers that can hardly participate in the festival with their exclusive booths. 

The G-Star 2009 will be carried out along with diverse auxiliary events, including the ICON 2009 (an international contents developer conference), GNGWC 2009 (game contest), music concerts, family game contest and board game contest.

■ NCsoft , NHN and Blizzard Entertainment

Celebrating its fifth anniversary, the G-Star 2009 enlisted this year Blizzard Entertainment which would participate in the event for the first time with the largest size. The steady G-Star participants – including NCsoft, NHN, Nexon, Neowiz Games and CJ Internet – will be at the event.  Another new participant is MGame, while YD Online and WeMade Entertainment – which were absent last year – will each have a large-sized booth. 

NCsoft plans to unveil its new play trailer and game information of , which has been in the spotlight for being the next-generation MMORPG, in advance on November 25 at the press conference NCsoft G-Star Premiere, just one day before the opening of the G-Star 2009.  In addition, the company will introduce its which is an extreme combat between two different cars, and which is a shooting action RPG set in the future earth. 

Headed by its MMORPG which will be open to the public for the first time, NHN intends to decorate its booth with , and , and also set up a separate booth for functional and educational games. 

The new participant of this year, MGame, will put on several games led by .  Unlike its previous version, seeks to become the legitimate martial arts online game.  The company is expected to release a trial version or play trailer. 

Neowiz Games will introduce the Korean version of along with and whereas YD Online will reveal which is a sequel to the dominant leader of the rhythm action online games, , raising public interest. 

Participating with a large-sized booth, Nexon keeps everyone guessing which games the company will bring in.  The company’s booth is likely to garner the largest attention during the event if new games such as (which is supposed to be in the development stage). 

Aurora Games is a new game publisher that started out in July 2009, concentrating on online game publishing and exclusive game development businesses, and plans to introduce 5 ~ 6 publishing projects mainly consisting of casual RPGs, including . 

Blizzard Entertainment is anticipated to set up its booth centering on and also have a trial version of available. 

The largest online game distributor in Eastern Europe, Astrum Online Entertainment, will introduce its games such as , and meet with Korean game publishers to establish agreements on entering into the Russian, CIS and Eastern European markets. 

■ First G-Star Held in Busan, Korea

The G-Star 2009 will have the record-high number of participants, a total of 184 companies, including major Korean game publishers with nearly 10 large-sized booths, small and medium game companies in the joint hall, and other game companies with consultation booths in the B2B hall. The number of participating companies climbed by 22 to 184 this year from 162 in 2008, including 80 foreign companies from 21 countries (such as Russia, Germany, the U.S., the U.K., Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, China, Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia). 

As it moved out of the Seoul metropolitan area to BEXCO in Busan for the first time, the G-Star 2009 has attracted interest in its results.  Unlike the market concerns over the location beyond the Seoul metropolitan area filled with game companies, the G-Star 2009 is projected to make historic records in the number of participants and business-wise success thanks to active participation applications.