Kakao Games Swings to Red in Q3 on Weak Mobile Game Sales.

Seoul: Kakao Games Corp., the game publishing unit of South Korean social media giant Kakao Corp., said Wednesday it swung to a net loss in the third quarter on sluggish sales of its mobile games. The company posted a net loss of 7.3 billion won (US$5.3 million) in the July-September period, compared with a net profit of 3.7 billion won a year ago, according to its regulatory filing. According to Yonhap News Agency, Kakao Games' operating profit plunged 80.1 percent on-year to 5.7 billion won, and its sales dropped 14.3 percent to 193.9 billion won. The company reported its revenue from mobile games decreased 31.1 percent on-year to 126.6 billion won due to the poor performance of its external publishing titles. Sales from PC games, however, surged 196 percent to 34.2 billion won on a collaboration event with the battle royale shooter PUBG: Battlegrounds, developed by Krafton Inc. Kakao Games said it plans to publish new game titles in various genres starting in the fourth quarter, including early access fo r the action role-playing game Path of Exile 2 in December. Next year, the company also plans to launch massively multiplayer online role-playing game titles, including Project Q developed by Lionheart Studio, and Chrono Odyssey by Npixel.