On 5th Sep. Jae-Ho Lee, NCsoft West Inc. CEO announced that pre-order for Aion reached 300 thousands copies for two months.Yes,it's surprising news, as he said. But these numbers can not guarantee Aion's ultimate success in U.S. market. We won‘t know until the results come out.
Nonetheless, 300 thousands copies as a pre-order is an encouraging result. According to Mr. Lee(CEO of NCsoft West) 300 thousands copies pre-order is definitely a record. No Korean online games launched in the U.S. have gotten such mass copies as pre-order. Ncsoft expects to gain approximately 10 million dollars from pre-order.
TJ Kim,founder
of NCsoft, assumed that Aion will compete with World of Warcraft(WoW)
in the U.S. market. Of course, NCsoft has never said that
Aion is aiming to beat WoW up in public, only said
that Aion will challenge WoW.
NCsoft has already attracted 6 million players by Guildwar for 4 years. But they are still hungry. They needs more than that. Maybe 10 millioncopies sale?
Aion has some strong points comparing
with WoW. The main one is flight: at level 10 your
character gains wings, so the action turns into a 3D experience
with some quests requiring you to fly around, and with some
options for combat in flight. The other one is graphics. Some
of U.S. online game media appreciated that in matters of graphics
Aion wins, as expected, the comparison with WoW. But gaming is
not all about the graphics as everybody knows. Especially MMORPG has
to offer more than just it looks. It will not take
long time. We can accounter the conclusion for this competition between
WOW and Aion.
