First Zynga, now Nexon plans to go IPO

Here comes the gaming IPO’s! Just a week after Zynga filed to go IPO, another games company is planning on going public, but from an unexpected place.

According to Techcrunch, Korean online gaming giant Nexon is planning on going public soon.

A 17-year old company from a country where playing online games is a cooler activity than going to the movies, Nexon boasts better numbers than Zynga.

Nexon boasts 3000 employees, 1.14 billion culmulative registered users, and 2009 revenues of $648 million. Nexon just launched its mainstay product, MapleStory Adventures, on Facebook in beta, and so far, it’s growing very well.

Unlike Zynga, Nexon is not currently tied to Facebook for all its distribution and therefore doesn’t have to pay a 30% cut for the majority of sales on virtual items in its games.

Expect a lot more social game and virtual item-based online game companies from Asia getting in on the IPO fever this year and using that money to expand in a big way in the US market this year. Now that the US is finally jumping on the freemium gaming bandwagon (we’re about 15 years behind Asia, sad but true), the competition is on!

Joel Brodie