Epic Games has landed big massively multiplayer online game developer NCSOFT as a customer for its Unreal Engine 4.

NCSOFT is the first company in video-game hot-spot South Korea to sign on for the new development engine. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The deal is an important one for Epic since NCSOFT is such an important player in the MMO game space.

“NCSOFT are one of the world’s leading developers of massively multiplayer online games, and this multi-title license signifies their confidence in Unreal Engine 4,” an Epic spokesperson told WRAL News.

Other announced customers for Unreal 4 include Square Enix, Zombie Studios and Phosphor Games.

“Unreal Engine 4 is an extremely fascinating game engine in terms of its unprecedented efficiency and performance,” said James Bae, chief product officer of NCSOFT. “We plan to release our best game ever using our Unreal Engine expertise and the new state-of-the-art Unreal Engine 4 tools.”

The Unreal engines are used across game creation platforms around the world.

“NCSOFT’s first Unreal Engine mega hit, ‘Lineage II,’ has remained in Korea’s top 10 games for 10 years, and people have been blown away by the leading-edge Unreal Engine 3 visuals of ‘Blade and Soul,’” said Ray Park, territory manager for Epic Games Korea which secured the NCSOFT deal. “With Unreal Engine 4 in their hands, NCSOFT is set to redefine MMORPG [role playing game] success all over again.”

NCSOFT’s “Blade & Soul” game, which won a host of awards in Korea, was developed with the Unreal 3 engine.

Privately held Epic is based in Cary.

Video Game Sales Fell in 2012 

Consumers spent 9.4 percent less on video games last year as increases in digital downloads failed to offset falling packaged-title purchases, according to researcher NPD Group Inc.

Sales of all video games fell to $14.8 billion in 2012, from $16.3 billion a year earlier, the Port Washington, New York-based company said in a statement today.

Titles downloaded to computers and mobile devices were the industry’s bright spot, rising 16 percent to $5.92 billion, NPD said.

Video-game publishers have struggled to build momentum in their packaged-title businesses as consumers flock to digitally downloaded games that sell for a fraction of the $60 charged for big-budget titles sold at retail.

Consumers spent $8.88 billion on packaged titles, including used games and rentals, down 21 percent from a year earlier, NPD estimated.

(Bloomberg news contributed to this report.)

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