Asian Media maps out plans for early 2008

By Alex Villafania, hackenslash Reporter
INQUIRER.net

ASIAN MEDIA, which publishes the massively multiplayer online role-playing game Lineage II, promises to make big splashes in early 2008.

In particular is the commercialization of Lineage II, which has been in open beta since July this year. The company will also launch in the first quarter of 2008 the Kamael update of Lineage II, which is expected to introduce a new race of characters.

In line with the early year plans of Asian Media for Lineage II is the upcoming single of the winners of their Game Girls competition. A Lineage II-inspired music video will also feature the five-person Game Girls.

Asian Media partnered with record label Sony BMG Philippines for the Game Girls competition. The winning Game Girls, who follow the same concept as the widely popular all-girl dance troupe Pussycat Dolls, will become part of the marketing strategy of Asian Media for its games, as well as become Sony BMG talents.

In an interview Asian Media chief operating officer Ronald Allan Aquino said the company is prepared for 2008, expanding the current games they are publishing as well as introducing new games after Lineage II goes commercial.

Aquino declined to go into the details of the new games they plan to launch in the Philippines, but noted that one will be an online role-playing game and another a casual game.

“We’re focusing all our efforts now with Lineage II, which is showing a lot of promise since the start of the beta testing,” Aquino said.

He said the Philippines has the most number of players in the game, accounting for about 80 percent of the total. Other markets where the game is played are Malaysia and Singapore.

“There are approximately 300, 000 Filipinos playing the game and about 60, 000 from Malaysia and Singapore,” Aquino said.

He also revealed that Asian Media has commissioned a third-party survey on their game’s popularity.

The study, done by a local research company called Frames, surveyed 109 online game players from at least 10 Internet cafes in Metro Manila. The survey, which started in mid-October until the first week of November, revealed that Lineage II was the second most-played online game in Internet cafes.

“Of course, it comes as a surprise because we expected the newer titles from the other publishers to be the first in the list because they came right after we did. It just shows that this game has so much more potential,” Aquino said.

Earlier this year, Asian Media went into an exclusive partnership with Lineage II South Korean developer NCsoft to publish and market the game in the Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia for a sum of $5.5 million.

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