Look, let us be honest, Smilegate has been making quite a splash in overseas markets recently, particularly in Japan with titles like Chaos Zero Nightmare (hereafter referred to as CZN) which launched last year. They are aggressively pushing their global footprint by showing up at international shindigs like Anime Expo and the Tokyo Game Show. Given that Japan remains one of the premier gaming markets on the planet, they returned to Tokyo Game Show 2026 for a second consecutive year, bringing along Dead Account: Two Blue Flames and Miraeshi: The Unseen Future to cement their presence. We sat down with Baek Young-hoon, the Chief Business Officer (CBO) leading Smilegate Megaport on the ground, to figure out just what they are focusing on to crack the Japanese market.

When I first came on board as the head of Megaport, my focus was squarely on mobile game publishing. Critics used to argue that Smilegate's mobile success was entirely propped up by Epic Seven, but lately, we have been flexing our business muscles and delivering solid results with Lord Nine, CZN, and Eclipse. Becoming CBO does not mean I suddenly oversee every single operation overnight. I plan to keep the Megaport and Stove platform duties running smoothly while gradually refining my responsibilities over time.

Rather than clinging strictly to the label 'subculture', I prefer viewing it through the broader lens of the animation boom. We are certainly not putting all our eggs in one specific basket, but animation-driven games, including subculture titles, will likely make up over half of our core portfolio in the next two to three years. The market itself has grown massively, so we intend to keep hunting down great opportunities in this space and pushing our internal development teams forward.

Historically, Epic Seven made waves in the West, but our revenue share in Japan was practically non-existent. However, CZN put up impressive numbers, climbing into the top tier for both revenue and player counts in Japan. The absolute figures might look modest compared to mega-blockbusters, but we reckon we have successfully carved out a foothold. Armed with this momentum, rolling out Dead Account and Miraeshi should yield some genuinely meaningful outcomes. Japan is a market that demands persistent cultivation, and as we learn more about local player preferences year by year, the overall situation is steadily improving.

Revenue matters from a business perspective, obviously, but that is merely a lagging indicator. The single most crucial leading metric for us is player retention. If we can keep those numbers high, it opens the door for much more aggressive marketing. When these layers of fandom stack up nicely, you create genuine opportunities to expand existing IPs into full-fledged franchises. Japanese players tend to exhibit fierce loyalty once they lock in with a brand, making player loyalty the absolute holy grail over there.

Japan is notoriously difficult to break into, but once you build trust with the community, it is one of the top global gaming markets that you can sustain for decades. When I first started working in Japan twenty years ago, South Korean companies were hardly received with open arms, but the vibe has shifted dramatically since then.

Drawing on my long tenure working in Japan, my job is to accurately decode local player needs and reflect them directly in our products. I want to carefully manage our fandom and ensure players can enjoy our games continuously without ever feeling alienated.

Japanese IPs are by no means a golden ticket to guaranteed success. In an environment where mobile marketing costs keep spiralling upward, leveraging a famous IP certainly helps with marketing and planning. On the flip side, dealing with meticulous oversight from original creators brings plenty of headaches. Rather than blindly expanding our Japanese IP projects, we evaluate various factors carefully—growth potential, fee structures, and game fit—before moving forward.

Teaming up with local publishers often hits a wall because corporate culture clashes turn out to be much harsher than expected, making smooth communication and good results hard to come by. Rather than third-party publishing, having South Korean developers handle services directly—while leveraging original or local IPs—makes a lot more sense. Of course, each route has its trade-offs. Using a local IP softens initial player resistance, but original creators can choke your live-service operational freedom. On the other hand, original new titles like Miraeshi demand heavy investments of time and cash to build initial awareness and a fanbase. But once they stabilize, you gain the freedom to roll out rapid online and offline events tailored to player demands.

The ultimate litmus test was whether the worldview and character designs would click with players. We figured Dead Account's quirky premise—dealing with abandoned personal data left inside strangers' smartphones—would resonate well with Japanese sensibilities, while also carrying the lighter tone modern Japanese gamers adore. With Miraeshi, AD 'Hyeon-ra' brings a distinct character and art style to the table, and we were confident that executing this in high fidelity would keep players satisfied.

This year's Tokyo Game Show saw a sharp drop in Chinese publisher participation, while South Korean companies clearly demonstrated their serious ambitions for global expansion. Major Japanese corporations focused heavily on locking down key flagship titles, whereas South Korean firms leaned heavily into subculture offerings. Beyond that, genuine mega-blockbusters were thin on the ground, and pure mobile-only games have all but vanished. Even indie developers are making an unmistakable pivot away from mobile and handhelds straight toward PC platforms.

It all comes down to focusing relentlessly on our customers and fans. In the past, we occasionally made choices based on what we wanted to build or what was convenient for development. Nowadays, when we prep a new title, we explicitly avoid lazy demographic targets like 'males in their 20s and 30s' and instead push our teams to deeply analyze subtle player tendencies and the exact games they are currently playing.

Constantly figuring out what our existing fans want and delivering on it is vital. For Japanese players, who tend to lean somewhat conservative, continuously offering something that feels both familiar and refreshingly new is our core differentiator and masterstroke. The recent success of Eclipse: The Awakening is proof that this philosophy works.

Since CZN didn't quite hit our aggressive initial forecasts, we kept our headcount lean, steadying the ship with a mid-teen team size. As for release dates, Dead Account: Two Blue Flames will likely drop a bit sooner, though we haven't locked down a firm date as it still has to clear internal playtests. We are aiming for a summer release next year for Miraeshi, and we plan to weaponize player feedback gathered through upcoming tests to polish both titles.

While we don't have concrete blueprints just yet, I strongly believe we need to execute our offline merchandise business much more systematically. CZN alone might feel a bit lightweight on that front, but if Miraeshi hits the jackpot, we are kicking around ideas for a joint offline event. If performance exceeds expectations down the road, we will definitely explore adaptations like anime or aggressive fan-driven derivative creations, though it is still a bit early to map that out.

On the publishing front, we pitch ourselves as the company that understands market dynamics and player trends on a profound level. Developers need more than just financial backing; they need a publisher capable of reading the room and providing solid guidance on marketing and business strategy, and we have built undeniable competence there. Forming win-win business models through collaborations with indie creators has also been working out wonderfully.

We are extending these exact models to independent indie developers, offering them an environment where they can pour all their energy into actual game development. Through second-party investments, we will keep cultivating long-term partnerships, and our internal studio teams are actively chipping in by pooling shared administrative tasks across different corporate entities.

We have recently kicked our indie game publishing efforts into high gear via Stove. Simply nagging developers to list their games on the platform isn't enough to forge a genuine win-win. By taking on publisher risks and actively backing promotional efforts, we help developers harvest players across both Steam and Stove simultaneously.

We are also putting serious brainpower into technical solutions that make it dead simple for Japanese indie developers—who often find expanding onto Steam daunting—to hook into Stove. We want word-of-mouth praise to spread, showing that setting up shop on Stove genuinely moves the needle, and we are pulling out all the stops to pack the platform with stellar games. Adieu!