NPIXEL Announces New MMORPGs, Including “Project S” and Gran Saga

Alright, this is pretty exciting news! 2020 is already looking to be a pretty sick looking year in terms of MMO releases, but we’re just beginning January and already we have more to look forward to.
I love whenever new MMOs are announced – the more games available in the market, the more we have to play, right? But you know what’s more exciting then new MMO announcements? When new MMOs are announced with the intention of releasing globally!
I can’t tell you how many times I see a trailer or announcement for a brand new upcoming South Korean, Japanese or Chinese MMORPG “coming soon!” .. only to find it’ll be a decade before we actually have it reach our shores.

And that’s why I’m excited about this announcement specifically. See, back on November 26th last year I did a video on Gran Saga, an upcoming MMORPG with cross-play functionality between PC, Console and Mobile devices, much like Genshin Impact.
At the time, all that was revealed was a cinematic trailer for the game along with some story elements and screenshots about various weapon types and characters.
But I wasn’t discouraged – I was still a little excited because it was an MMO releasing on every platform this year – and NPIXEL, the developers behind the game have every intention of releasing it globally.
Now, fast forward to a few days ago, NPIXEL’s CEO announced that the company has received significant funding with the development of future games in mind. Billions of won, moreso than almost any other company in South Korea has received in Series A funding.
Seriously, the amount of funding was arguably some of the largest ever seen in South Korea, and this is partly due to the success of their previous game, Seven Knights.
While, yes, Seven Knights was a mobile game – NPIXEL are interested in expanding into other areas of gaming, and onto other platforms as part of their expansion goals. Thus their intentions of releasing Gran Saga cross-platform.

The company wants to grow and transition from a small mobile developer into a much larger gaming company with a significantly larger, more successful lineup of games across every platform they can release onto.
Who knows, NPIXEL look as though they might be trying to take on Pearl Abyss and Smilegate. While unlikely it’ll really be able to push out titles with the same quality, that’s a solid starting point.
So, the information I’m sure you’re all waiting for is the announcement that yes, Gran Saga is expected to release this year, and yes it is expected to release globally, but more importantly, NPIXEL revealed one of several new MMO-related and non-MMO related projects, “Project S.”
No information has been revealed yet as to specifics for the game, but we can be sure that NPIXEL have a couple exciting MMOs in the works with planned global releases sometime in the future.
If we’re lucky, we won’t have a repeat of Lost Ark, instead, having South Korean developers beginning to plan for Western releases concurrently with their own local releases.

South Korean MMOs always look incredible. The issue is that after they’re announced, they do one of 2 things.
They either release in South Korea after a year or two, with small teases for a global release lingering for years until the game dies in South Korea. They then release the game as a buy-to-play MMO in the West to try and milk us for as much money as they can.
Or, they just never release the game, because they feel as though the Western market just isn’t worth it for them to really invest into.
And I get it, I do. But the Western market is thirsty for MMOs and trust me, there are millions, tens of millions of us playing MMOs looking for and waiting for something really awesome to play.
Astellia Online did very well when it launched even though it was a pretty basic, pretty generic MMO.
I’m glad that, at least with regards to NPIXEL specifically, they have a large enough understanding of the genre to acknowledge the fact that we’re actually worth considering when releasing an MMO.
And as such, they’re planning for global releases instead of a South Korean release exclusively.

While Gran Saga is their first large-scale PC MMORPG, I have hopes that over time they might very well end up producing some good games. Who knows, Gran Saga, or maybe even Project S or one of their other planned projects might end up blowing us away.
All we can do is wait and see.

Nevertheless, as stated, 2020 is looking to be a pretty awesome year in terms of releases. I’m very excited to see what else the year has to offer us.