What are game industry executives' reflections on 2025, and what are their thoughts on 2026? We spoke to Jeonghee Jin, CEO of NC America and COO of NC West, to find out. This interview concludes our series.
GamesMarkt: What is your verdict as you look back on 2025?
Jeonghee "JJ" Jin: "Looking back on the year 2025, many people around me said it was a painful year for the video game industry overall, and I agree with them. For the past couple of years, the industry has gone through many challenges, skepticisms, and cutbacks, and we've seen more games released across the board, including the AAA sector. Though there were proud new studio achievements and successes, we heard more about layoffs, project cancellations, and shutdowns.
For Ncsoft and NC America, the situation was not very different. Ncsoft has put a lot of effort into restructuring over the past couple of years to lay the new foundation for future growth. During the process, the company has kept its focus on the core MMO business, recently launching Aion 2 successfully in Korean and Taiwan. At the same time, the company also expanded its business to new genres, making more acquisitions, investments, and publishing deals with third-party studios. Just in 2025, we announced several new publishing titles targeting 2026 and 2027 global releases and a new mobile casual business to fuel the company’s growth.
For Ncsoft and NC America, I'd summarize the year 2025 as both a transition year and a foundational building year. NC America began growing its North American publishing operations with a strong focus on its communities and broadening the platforms on which our games are published, expanding franchise titles such as Blade & Soul NEO and Blade & Soul Heroes, and getting them on Steam. At Gamescom 2025, we announced plans for a lineup that looks nothing like our previous rosters. We announced plans for the MMO-shooter Cinder City, we debuted the time-based survival shooter Time Takers, the anime-inspired action RPG Limit Zero Breakers, and others. At G-Star in November we unveiled Horizon: Steel Frontiers in collaboration with Sony Entertainment Interactive, which surprised and delighted our players.
Not only for Ncsoft, but for our industry as a whole, I believe we've reached an inflection point. After a couple of years of a downturn, many challenges and pains, there are new approaches arising from the changing market environment, and we’re seeing successes. We're ready to see more growth."
GamesMarkt: What are your predictions for the gaming industry in 2026?
Jeonghee "JJ" Jin: "In 2026 and the upcoming few years, we will see many positive changes in the game climate, with businesses rebounding across the board. Dozens of great games are slated for this year, from indies to franchise titles, including some of our own – and the world, of course, awaits Grand Theft Auto 6. But NC America has such a strong lineup for 2026, with more surprises and announcements to come.
As an industry, we are producing more games than ever. Players have more choices than ever. Competition pushes the quality higher. But, at the same time, getting noticed – you know, surfacing games for visibility – requires immense effort, experimentation, and innovation. Physical game shows, like Gamescom, will grow larger and more popular. Players will grow pickier about their live-service games but will still continue to play them – we're very aware, for instance, that MMO players from the 1990s and 2000s are still waiting for quality MMOs to come their way – and we believe that the casual mobile market is still bustling and full of growth opportunities.
In this changing market environment with more competition not only between titles and genres, but also competition amongst the various kinds of media, to hold players' attention and their time, there's one principle that always applies and that I stick to. Look at your players' community and listen carefully to what they say regarding their gameplay experience, and you will know where you need to go. I cannot emphasize more about the importance of the community voices for live-service games, and how we, developers and publishers, have to interact with our players' community. Successful launches and successful live-service games don’t rely on big budget marketing campaigns as much anymore, and so it really comes down to winning our players' hearts by providing the best gameplay experience possible."
GamesMarkt: How is Slitherine positioned for 2026?
Jeonghee "JJ" Jin: "We're ready for further growth as a leading global publisher in 2026. We’re positioned very well, with a variety of new unique games slated for global release, including Cinder City, Aion 2, Time Takers, and Limit Zero Breakers, and we have more announcements to make. We have high hopes for Aion 2, which has been doing incredibly well in Korea and Taiwan. MMOs are our expertise area, and I’m confident that we will successfully bring the game to the western players too.
We're a new challenger in the shooter genre. Both Cinder City, an MMO-shooter with heavy gunplay, and the team-based survival shooter Time Takers, offer unique and innovative gameplay experiences to players, and I'm excited to bring these titles to the world. The fast-action monster hunting and anime-style Limit Zero Breakers will be great for those who love anime-style games and action RPGs. Not only those new projects, but our legacy titles Lineage 2, Aion, Blade & Soul, and Blade & Soul NEO, and Blade & Soul Heroes, will all see big content updates and community activities planned for players, many of whom have enjoyed these games for decades.
We're also planning to do more live events where we can meet with our players in the upcoming years. Plus, we're also continuing to look at new publishing projects and developers to partner with. It's a very exciting time for us.
(...) The 10th anniversary of Blade & Soul for western players is a significant milestone for us. How many live-service games have shuttered in the first year or two, or closed even before they launch? Here we are celebrating 10 years of the core franchise, with offshoots such as Blade & Soul NEO and Heroes doing their own thing. It’s a tough category to compete in, and so I’m very proud of my teams and everyone at Ncsoft who have worked on Blade & Soul’s development and live-service work over the last decade. There are always things to improve for live-service games, and so we will continue to serve our Blade & Soul community in earnest to improve them."
Headquartered in Pangyo, South Korea, Ncsoft is a global publisher and developer renowned for its original IPs, including the Lineage, Aion, Blade & Soul, and Guild Wars franchises. Ncsoft was founded in 1997. With regional offices in North America, Europe, Japan and Taiwan, its global network reaches gamers worldwide. NC America is the Western publishing division and strategic global base for Ncsoft. Going forward, NC America will expand its portfolio of Ncsoft-developed games and launch original third-party titles in the global market.
