Asiasoft putting up local online gaming unit

MANILA, Philippines - Asiasoft Corp. Public Co. Ltd., a regional online gaming publisher, is planning to put up a unit in the Philippines to capture a share of the local gaming market, company officials said.

“Right now we are in the midst of setting up an office in the Philippines. We are looking at setting it up in the first half of the year,” Leslie Lin, marketing communications manager of the firms Singapore unit, Asiasoft Online Pte Ltd., told reporters at the launch of a new online game yesterday.

He said the firm is setting up a Philippine unit and will be introducing new games in the country to corner a significant share of the local gaming market.

Asiasoft, which works with content developers and industry partners to develop the regional online gaming community, is listed in Thailand. It has units in Singapore and Malaysia.

“We are not looking at a specific target or numbers right now. We are looking at first, bringing more gaming choices,” Lin said.

He said the firm is starting its expansion to the Philippines through the launch of MapleSEA, the localized version of the multiplayer online role playing game MapleStory.

Baek Doo San, general manager of MapleSEA, said in the same event they decided to launch MapleSEA in the Philippines following requests from Filipino gamers.

“We have the statistics of the users and we saw many Philippine users playing the game in the global server so we wanted to make it official and to give them a platform or community,” he said.

The launch of MapleSEA in the Philippines, he said, will allow Filipino users to play the game with gamers from Singapore and Malaysia through both countries’ servers.

He said a server for the Philippines will also be launched later on as the number of Filipino MapleSEA players increase.

At present, he said, there are four million MapleSEA gamers from Singapore and Malaysia.

Lyndon Jocson, business development manager at Asiasoft Online, said in the same event Filipino users can start playing the game on March 7.

He said prepaid cards, which gamers can use to purchase enhancements for their chosen characters in the game, will likewise be available in all outlets where cellphone prepaid cards are being sold.

To gain a significant share of the Philippine gaming market, he said, the firm intends to launch other games to provide the market with more choices within the year.

“We’re looking at launching 15 more games for this year,” he said.

He said Asiasoft’s entry and expansion to the Philippines is timely as leading players IP E-Game Ventures Inc. and Level Up! are both focused on the merger of their online game publishing businesses at the moment.

IP E-Game announced last week that it signed an agreement to transfer its game publishing titles and assets to Level Up! , a move expected to provide operational synergies and savings for both companies.

“Right now, they’re focusing mostly on the merger so it is a perfect opportunity for us to come in and bring in other titles,” Jocson said.