Nintendo Announces Korean Push For 2007

Nintendo President Satoru Iwata has revealed that the company plans to launch its popular DS Lite handheld in South Korea on January 18, and release a localized version of the Wii in late 2007, revealing new support for Korean developers to make DS/Wii titles. According to a report on the announcement from Korean news site JoongAng Daily, prior to today's news, Nintendo products were previously introduced into Korea through a third party, and were only available in Japanese, making this a major tactics shift for the company. Nintendo announced in June that it would invest ¥3 billion ($25.2 million) in order to found Nintendo of Korea, a new subsidiary that opened for business on July 7. According to Nintendo officials at the time, the new Seoul, Korea based office was created in order to strongly focus on Korea-language products, such as the DS Lite and localized software. "We will begin sales after localization is complete," Iwata commented. "We plan to actively support Korean game software developers who have great expertise in developing online games and support their advances into foreign markets." Nintendo has begun work on an as yet unannounced project with Korean online game publisher Nexon (Kingdom of the Wind), presumably in an attempt to capitalize on Nexon's understanding of the Korean market. However, Iwata did note that the limited console presence within the Korean market makes it feel as if the company is "selling women's cosmetics to men," chiefly due to the overwhelming popularity of online PC titles such as massively multiplayer online games, a genre within which Iwata expressed no interest in competing. Instead, Nintendo will focus on creating a “new entertainment culture” within the Korean gaming market, a paradigm that could echo the company's efforts in other regions to market games to those not necessarily inclined to play games. As part of their worldwide expansion, all three console manufacturers have shown increasing interest in the market lately, as have many publishers – with Activision announcing a new Seoul office in recent months, and Sony Computer Entertainment Korea developing and publishing a number of PSP and PS2 titles exclusively for the South Korean market.