KOREAN ELECTRONIC GAME INDUSTRY NEEDS PROMOTION PLANS.

SEOUL, Aug 1 Asia Pulse - As the domestic and world electronic games markets expand their horizons, Korea's on-line and personal computer package-game makers are being called upon to come up with comprehensive plans to take advantage of this potentially lucrative market.

The Korea Game Promotion Center said that despite its relatively late entry into the sector, the country's game industry is expected to top 1.01 trillion won (US$776 million) in sales this year. This represents a 21 per cent leap from last year, they said, and that the size of the market should exceed 1.5 trillion won by 2003 given the current pace.

Figures for the global market are far greater with International Data Corp, Gartner Dataquest and Datamonitors predicting that it will reach $6.1 billion this year, with PC game growth expected at 11 per cent year-on-year and on-line games exceeding even that.

The same data said that these two fields should generate $8.3 billion in sales by 2003.

Industry insiders have said that domestic on-line games, such as Lineage, Fortress and Kingdom of the Winds, have all received positive reviews from Korean players and from foreign customers in countries like Taiwan and Indonesia.

The strength of the games industry is particularly noteworthy since program manufacturers and distributors have reported hefty profits even though most computer related and information technology firms have had to bear unsatisfactory returns this year.

Equitable Co, a stock market appraisal company, recently said that NC Soft's President Kim Tae-jin ranked fifth in capital gains for the first half of 2000, having netted 80.3 billion won. NC Soft is the producer of Lineage.