South Korean game companies are making consoles a new breakthrough. It reflects a move as mobile game-led growth is no longer as strong as before.

The 2025 Korea Game White Paper released by the Korea Creative Content Agency showed console game exports in 2024 rose 15.1 percent from a year earlier to $213.76 million, the highest growth rate among platforms. That contrasted with a 6.3 percent fall in PC game exports over the same period. It means consoles remain a minor platform domestically, but have become the fastest-growing channel in global exports.

Beyond the figures, recent hit cases are also changing industry sentiment. Pearl Abyss' Crimson Desert sold 4 million copies in 12 days after its release on April 1, speeding up the industry’s reassessment of console strategies.

◆Console pivot driven by mobile slowdown

Total domestic game industry revenue in 2024 rose 3.9 percent from a year earlier to 23.85 trillion won. Mobile games accounted for 59 percent, down from more than 60 percent in the past, and their growth rate stayed at 3.4 percent. As views spread that further growth is hard to secure from the domestic mobile market alone, companies are turning their attention to global markets.

In those global markets, consoles are a mainstream platform, unlike in South Korea. The white paper put the global console market in 2024 at $53.712 billion, bigger than online PC games at $38.362 billion. Data released by Pearl Abyss during Crimson Desert's commercial success showed 74 percent of the global console market is concentrated in North America and Europe. That is why console strategies are closely linked to targeting North America and Europe. In 2024, the share of South Korean game exports to North America rose 4.7 percentage points from a year earlier to 19.5 percent, and the white paper said North America and Europe combined at 27.2 percent were the second-largest export destination after China at 29.7 percent.

Concerns about an MMORPG-centered structure are also cited as a driver of the shift. Park Kwan-ho (박관호), chief executive of Wemade, said at the company’s regular shareholders meeting last month that the overall global MMORPG market is becoming a negative market. He said it has become a market where existing users are maintained and there are no new entrants. Park added that the direction for new intellectual property was set to combine a console format with online elements. It is not only Wemade. Some also say changes in genre structure are driving a broader strategic reshuffle across the industry.

The faster pace of commercial success for locally made console and multi-platform games is also affecting sentiment. Neowiz's Lies of P surpassed cumulative global sales of 4 million copies as of March 2026 after its September 2023 release. Sensor Tower said Shift Up's Stellar Blade reached a combined 6.1 million copies on PS5 and Steam as of January 2026 after its April 2024 release. Recent disclosed sales results show Nexon's Arc Raiders topped 4 million copies within two weeks of release, and Pearl Abyss' Crimson Desert did so in 12 days.

As success stories accumulate, major companies that had kept their distance from consoles in the past have started moving in earnest. Netmarble and Kakao Games are widening their steps with new multi-platform titles. Netmarble released The Seven Deadly Sins: Origin last month for PC, console and mobile, and plans to introduce the four-player co-op action title Evilbane on consoles in the second half. Kakao Games is also increasing its console weight. It plans to release its subsidiary XL Games' ArcheAge Chronicle and Ocean Drive Studio's God Save Birmingham this year for PC and consoles, and is pushing for a release in the first half of next year for Chrono Odyssey developed by Chrono Studio.

NCSoft, Krafton and Wemade are following. NCSoft gained console launch experience with Throne and Liberty (TL), but among new titles designed from the start to target the global console market, the FPS Cinder City is close to the first case. Krafton is developing PUBG: Black Budget to expand the PUBG IP and the open-world action RPG Windless, based on a work by author Lee Young-do (이영도), as multi-platform titles including consoles. Wemade development subsidiary Mad Engine is also preparing the AAA-grade open-world RPG Project TAL, targeting a release next year.

Shift Up has also moved to internalise console development capabilities through its recent acquisition of Japanese developer Unbound. The move focuses on securing long-term IP rather than one-off hits. The trend is also reflected in employment indicators. The white paper showed the number of workers on the console platform in 2024 rose 18.4 percent from a year earlier, the biggest increase among platforms.

◆Profit structure is not as simple as a hit

Consoles can deliver large brand spillover effects when a hit emerges, but profits do not flow straight into developers’ earnings. Fees for platform operators such as Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft and publishing splits are deducted first, and revenue tends to be concentrated early after release due to the nature of packaged games. Packaged console games and mobile MMORPGs with long-term in-app purchase structures have different revenue models, making simple comparisons difficult. Still, the industry sometimes cites the revenue gap between Lies of P (Neowiz) and Night Crows (Wemade), released around a similar time, as an example of the limits of console profitability.

There is also criticism that the market is not one that anyone can easily follow, even as success cases increase, because bigger projects take longer to develop and carry higher failure costs. Crimson Desert took 7 years to develop, and during that time Pearl Abyss' share price showed high volatility until the visibility of commercial success rose.

The industry is split between assessments that the recent string of hits is changing perceptions of consoles and views that short-term results alone will not lead to building an ecosystem.

An industry official said it is clear consoles are taking hold as a realistic path for global expansion as success cases accumulate. But the official said that since one or two hit titles do not lift the stamina of the whole industry, the task from now is to build a structure that can steadily carry on follow-up titles and IP.