NCsoft has traditionally been an MMO company, but at one point the direction of the wind seemed to be changing. While the company has signed an exclusive contract with Sony and the PS3, it was rumored late last year that NCsoft was going to focus more on its non-game products, at least in Korea. We recently talked with Chris Chung, newly appointed President of NCsoft North America, to get a feel for NCsoft's direction for the next year.

Over the next year NCsoft is going to be launching two new games: Exteel and Aion. When asked about those titles, and the direction he's hoping to steer the company in for the next year, Chung responded, "Exteel is one of those MMO titles that has a really unique feel, being a third-person shooter. It'll be a free-to-play micro-transaction game, so it's offering yet another way to play our content. With Aion, it's what we do best; a blockbuster MMO title. We're really pleased in how it's coming along. It was created from scratch in Korea, with a consulting staff in North America to help get it ready for the global market."

"We have a solid strategy of building a high quality portfolio of games and we're going to continue to do that," he continued. "This year, were also going to focus on things we haven't been doing, like improving the user interaction. Along those same lines, we've been asking the consumers what they want and we might build a universal NCsoft 'launcher' like what's included with Tabula Rasa. They also want the ability to purchase things online and communicate with their friends playing our games, so we're looking into that too."

GameDaily BIZ also asked about NCsoft's future growth plans and if they'll bring over Korean social network services, such as Openmaru to the U.S. "We're actively reviewing those and making sure it's a service our customers are looking for," responded Chung. "So we're carefully reviewing them. We don't have any plans at the moment, but we look them over constantly."

"We do a portfolio review twice a year, and we have a significant amount of titles over the next few years – we'll continue to grow our portfolio," he added. "We're always interested in talking to development teams everywhere. Our developers aren't centralized; we find talented people and then we form a studio around them. We'll continue to do this if there's a compelling development team we find out there."

As our conversation went on, we discussed the relatively insular nature of the Korean and American game markets, with few titles achieving true success in both. Chung agreed, saying, "If you look across the entertainment market, there are very few things that can appeal across the whole world. There are cultural barriers that prevent this, and game development culture is no different. I really applaud World of Warcraft for being successful, but that is few and far between. They somehow have the 'mojo' and we're looking to see how we could create a global property with a similar sort of appeal."

Finally, we queried him on the exclusive deal that NCsoft recently signed with Sony for the PS3. We've yet to see an MMO game take off on consoles, so how will NCsoft approach this challenge? "I think there are a lot of causes that factor into good MMOs on a console," Chang ventured. "These are elements like 'does the person have a standard definition TV or an HDTV?' You don't have a good a resolution on regular TV, and a lot of games were hurting for that. Ultimately, we have to really optimize for consoles; we have to create an experience that's suited for the [PS3] and supports the MMO element. I think the shift is inevitable; real-time strategy is one of the last PC genres moving onto consoles, and I think we'll see a similar trend for online games as well."

"We are excited about the prospects for the next three years. I mean, being involved with the online gaming industry has me pretty excited. We see things like free-to-play models and micro-transactions coming into the pool and... as an industry, were going to be offering a variety of ways to appeal to the consumer. We look to be part of that revolution and hope to open the door to more and more new users," he concluded.