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Messaging and services company Line Corporation is branching out into games publishing.
Pocket Gamer reports that the new division will be called Line Games. It will focus its initial efforts on Japan, South Korea, Thailand and Taiwan.
Line has also taken a controlling 51 per cent stake in Korean developer NextFloor. That company was established in 2011 and has released several smartphone titles including Destiny Child, IX-Runner, RPG 1 Minute and GreatMage. Its most successful release is Dragon Flight, which has been downloaded over 24m times.
Line Games will operate out of the NextFloor office, and NextFloor CEO Min Kyu Kim will head up Line Games as chief executive.
Such game development and operational capabilities will be necessary to further evolve and expand Line’s gaming business, so we are excited to welcome NextFloor to the Line Group,” Line Corporation CEO Takeshi Idezawa said.
The newly established Line Games Corporation will reinforce our development capacity, allowing us to provide more diverse content to users around the world.”
Line Games CEO Kim added: Through this partnership, Line and NextFloor will strive to deliver games that can be enjoyed by users around the globe.
We will do our best to provide differentiated services and a strong competitive edge that can make Line Games an attention-grabbing company.”
Line, which was founded back in 2000, is the Japanese subsidiary of South Korean tech giant Naver Corporation. Its most successful product is the Line messaging app, although it does business in the webcomics, blogging and music streaming sectors.
It has already enjoyed previous games success, most notably with Disney Tsum Tsum.
