Kakao Games said today it has reached over 550 million registered users across its games portfolio and services. A newly formed division of South Korea’s Kakao, the group also reported more than 10 million daily active users across mobile, PC online, augmented reality, and virtual reality.
Whon Namkoong and Kyehyun Cho, joint CEOs of Kakao Games, said they want to grow the game service to 30 million daily active users, and they’re integrating Kakao’s game-related businesses under the umbrella of Kakao Games.
Kakao Group’s Kakao Talk took off as a mobile messaging service in South Korea, where the game-savvy population welcomed a lot of chatter about games and embraced the sharing of links in their messaging streams. That turned Kakao into a great way for publishers and developers to promote their games, and it generated a lot of money for Kakao.
Over the past five years, Kakao Games has launched more than 1,100 games through partnerships with more than 570 game developers. One of Kakao Games’ newer services is Kakao VX, a studio that specializes in VR and AR experiences.
In the mobile game sector, the company will expand its user base with Kakao Games channeling operations and direct publishing mobile games platforms Gamebyul and Starplay. The latter enables mobile games to be played on PC.
Kakao Games will continue to provide game services in a variety of genres. Any games that have “for Kakao” integration will allow you to log in using your Kakao account. From there you can do several things like invite your Kakao Talk friends to play with you, chat with those people, or send special emojis. And games that have this integration will share things like leaderboard and trophies.
The PC online game division will continue publishing and channeling video games through the PC game portal Daum Game. Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds will be released in the South Korean game market this month, and it is expected to be a huge title since it was the most-shared game on Twitch last quarter. Kakao plans on big expansions in both North America and Europe.