If a company wants to offer services so fantastic that its customers’ reaction would be “Oh My God!” why not just add that exclamation to its name?
That’s what the management of MacroWell Technology Co (茂為科技) was thinking when it changed the name of the company, which was set up in 1999, to MacroWell OMG Digital Entertainment Co (茂為歐買尬數位科技) in 2009.
Company chairman Calvin Lin (林一泓) said before he thought of offering “Oh My God-class” service to users, his company mainly served as an agent for online games and commercial software.
“I wanted to make my customers feel so awed that an online game company could provide such wonderful services that they would automatically exclaim, ‘Oh my God!’” Lin said in an interview on Sunday.
After the company hit a bottleneck in 2005, Lin decided in 2006 to transform it into an online game operator.
In 2008, MacroWell launched LUNA Online, a new type of game with cute and appealing characters, rather than violent action figures that were popular then, he said.
LUNA Online created a new vogue, attracting 2.5 million members and setting a record of 150,000 players online at a time.
The game became a market hit, reversing the company’s financial fortunes. MacroWell OMG’s annual net earnings per share of NT$82.69 (US$2.77) became a hot topic among industry analysts and observers.
Lin said he hoped to duplicate LUNA’s successful experience, but delayed the launch of new games because of the long time spent on discussing revisions with the game owners.
This resulted in a barely satisfactory performance, with a net profit of NT$465 million, or NT$4.34 per share, for the first 11 months of last year.
With the company debuting on the GRETAI Securities Market today at NT$120 per share, Lin forecast his company would double its revenue and profit this year by adding more product lines and merging and increasing domestic and overseas flows.
On the prospects of the gaming industry, Lin pointed to problems in the industry chain last year, with many companies maintaining stable revenues but posting lower profits.
Part of the trouble came from Chinese online businesses, which created their own traditional Chinese character versions without the authorization of the Taiwanese companies that owned the rights, he said.
With the Chinese “pirates” setting up mechanisms to collect fees, Taiwanese game providers saw their markets expand, but their revenue dropped.
Lin said the cost of an online gaming business includes royalties, salaries, management and marketing and server maintenance fees.
Marketing costs have risen since supermarkets took some game products and services off the shelf in a conflict with game providers over marketing channels, he said.
However, Lin remained upbeat about the industry’s future.
“Gaming companies should not see themselves as mere game providers,” he said. “They will have more room for development if they can offer new services in the Web and social networking areas.”
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