[비즈니스포스트] Domestic game company Shift Up’s new console game ‘Stella Blade’ has received favorable reviews even before its release and is showing signs of success.
Accordingly, ShiftUp’s IPO (initial public offering) scheduled for the second half of this year is expected to receive a boost.
▲ Image of Shift Up’s console game ‘Stella Blade’.
According to content evaluation site Metacritic on the 25th, Stella Blade received favorable reviews, scoring 82 points in expert evaluations.
Eurogamer Germany, which gave the game the highest score of 100, said, “A powerful combat system, great boss battles, exciting scenarios, motivating environmental exploration and many well-thought-out ideas make Stella Blade a great solo adventure.”
Stellar Blade is an action-adventure console game developed by Shift Up and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE).
It attracted a lot of attention even before its release as it was the first console game that CEO Kim Hyeong-tae, who was in charge of the early original drawings for ‘Genesis Battle’, ‘Magnacarta’, and ‘Blade & Soul’, attempted. In particular, it is notable that so much effort was put into creating a beautiful character that an actual model was used as the main character’s body model.
The game tells the story of human rebels fighting against aliens who have invaded Earth in a science fiction world. It is a story about defeating powerful alien enemies from the perspective of a female-enhanced human being raised by humans who were exiled to space.
User expectations for Stella Blade are also high. The demo version released in early March received good reviews for its high level of completion and excellent graphics. In addition, global awareness also increased as a report by a French media outlet that raised controversy over the game’s character profanity spread.
In the pre-sale rankings for PlayStation 5, the console platform where the game is released, Stella Blade ranked first in Korea and Taiwan and second in the US and UK. In Japan, it ranked 3rd and is showing signs of success even before its release.
There are also predictions that it will achieve similar or better results than ‘Nier Automata’ (Platinum Games, Japan), which is evaluated as a similar game in many aspects. Nier Automata was released in February 2017 and sold more than 2 million copies by September of that year.
▲ Content evaluation site Metacritic announced on the 24th that Stella Blade had a rating of 82 points. <메타크리틱 홈페이지>
Shift Up has had successive successes in the mobile game market in recent years. If it succeeds in console games this year following mobile games, the value of Shift Up, which is about to be listed, is expected to increase further.
The company has already achieved cumulative sales of KRW 200 billion with the mobile game Destiny Child (released in 2016) and KRW 1 trillion with Nike, the Goddess of Victory (released in 2022). If more than 2 million copies of the console game Stella Blade are sold this year, it is expected to generate additional sales of more than 100 billion won.
Shift Up recorded sales of 168.6 billion won and operating profit of 111 billion won in 2023. Compared to the previous year, sales increased by 155.2% and operating profit increased by 508.1%.
The company has been applying for listing preliminary review since March and aims to be listed in the second half of this year. The representative managers are Korea Investment & Securities, NH Investment & Securities, and JP Morgan Securities Seoul Branch. Reporter Cho Choong-hee
