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Korea Gets MMORPG Success, Xbox Antipathy
Thanks to GameSpot for their story revealing Korean MMORPG Lineage II has racked up significant amounts of initial subscribers in its native country. According to the article about the Unreal-engine PC sequel, "in the game's first five days in release, publisher NCsoft has tallied more than 130,000 paid users." However, SirBruce's subscription page points out that many subscribers to the initial, 4-million subscriber Lineage: The Blood Pledge "play in 'PC baangs', Internet cybercafes in [South] Korea that buy Lineage access from the company and then sell it at hourly rates to customers", making subscriber comparisons with games like Star Wars Galaxies more difficult. Elsewhere, GI.Biz reveals the PlayStation 2 is the most popular console in Korea, although only 600,000 strong, with 92.5 percent preferring it over the 60,000-selling Xbox, as "...players cited the lack of Korean language software and poor customer service as their key problems with the Xbox."
We don't make games for Korea on any of the platforms, but this is my understanding of the situation.
Sony localised the PS2 browser for Korean and provides support for game companies to release Korean-language versions of their games (eg. providing 'approved' Korean-language messages for things like "Now saving. Do not remove MEMORY CARD (PS2) in MEMORY CARD slot 1, reset or switch off console." As such PS2 games released in Korea are well-localised. Microsoft, on the other hand, is simply releasing English-language systems and software in Korea.
I am under the impression English is prevalent in Korea but I have a hard time believing Korean gamers won't choose Korean-language games over English ones.
Microsoft was talking about releasing western games in Japan without localising them. The idea was that, since the market was small and almost exclusively very hardcore gamers, they wouldn't mind the games being in English. I don't know if they are still planning to do this.
Graham