Krafton hopes new 'Big Franchise' strategy can find the next PUBG

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Krafton hopes new 'Big Franchise' strategy can find the next PUBG

Krafton CEO Kim Chang-han [KRAFTON]

Krafton CEO Kim Chang-han [KRAFTON]



Krafton, mostly known for PUBG: Battlegrounds, has been aggressively investing in developers around the world for the past few years in a global search for another big hit that can reprise the success of its hit release. Those efforts are culminating in the “Big Franchise IP” plan the game publisher unveiled Thursday, under which it will continue that quest — with a new focus on strengthening its current slate of studios.
 
CEO Kim Chang-han said Krafton would “drastically increase” its investment in in-house development, including the recruitment of talent and development of new titles with franchise potential, at its Live Talk anniversary event on Thursday, during which the executive detailed the company's strategies for the upcoming five years. 
 

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The unveiling came three days after Kim pledged to invest at least 200 billion won ($136 million) into the search for the next PUBG and spoke of other “ambitious plans” in a Jan. 13 Bloomberg interview.
 
Krafton has 14 in-house studios, including PUBG Studios, which developed the hit online battle royale game; Bluehole Studio, known for Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game TERA; and Unknown Worlds Entertainment, the U.S.-based developer behind the Subnautica franchise.
 
The new plan also includes plans to publish more titles through outside studios in an effort to diversify further from PUBG, via the introduction of second-party publishing and licensing. Krafton published The Callisto Protocol in 2022, a survival horror game for PC, PlayStation and Xbox platform of consoles.
 
“Krafton’s new titles will be released at full-scale this year,” the Krafton CEO said in a press release. “We will be securing a big franchise intellectual property (IP) that will succeed PUBG: Battlegrounds to grow the company step by step and double the corporate value.”
 
Krafton has many big titles planned for 2025. Unknown Worlds Entertainment will drop Subnautica 2, the sequel to the highly acclaimed action-adventure survival game Subnautica. At the same time, inZOI Studio will release its life-simulation game inZOI and Bluehole Studios will launch Dark and Darker Mobile. Titles such as Project ARC, a top-down multiplayer title and rhythm-based action game Hi-Fi Rush 2 are also currently in development.
 
The game publisher, through a collaboration with Nvidia, will also introduce a small language model-powered AI companion to PUBG and inZOI. The autonomous in-game AI will be powered on-device and aid the player or act as an interactive nonplayer character. 

BY CHO YONG-JUN [[email protected]]
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