The Finals ‘offers a clear opportunity to become a new and sustainable franchise pillar,’ Nexon says

South Korean video game publisher Nexon has plenty of faith in The Finals, the frenzied, free-to-play first-person-shooter developed by subsidiary company Embark Studios. In its latest financial report, Nexon said “[The Finals] offers a clear opportunity to become a new and sustainable pillar of Nexon’s global franchise strategy,” after the game surpassed the company’s internal projections and quarterly booking expectations.

The Finals saw over 200,000 concurrent users on Steam just 24 hours after its release, climbing to an all-time high concurrent player count of 242,399 at its peak. Although naturally that number has diminished after the initial buzz and release of the game, Nexon is still confident that The Finals, which helped boost company revenue by 78%, will be an essential property moving forward alongside games like Maplestory and Dave the Diver.

The Finals/Embark Studios

“The Finals launched against a murderer’s row of entrenched games franchises backed by massive marketing budgets,” Nexon added in the financial report. “Just two weeks after the December 8 launch, The Finals scaled to more than 10 million installs, broke into the top five most popular games on Steam and decisively outperformed our internal estimate for December.”

The Finals‘ most recent patch, game update 1.7.0, saw the disabling of the Dead Go Boom gameshow event, which made recently defeated players explode in violent fashion. The reaction to the Dead Go Boom event had been largely negative in the player community up until its removal from the game. Additional updates in the 1.7.0 patch included a new UI element that allowed players in a party to more quickly queue up for matches as well as ameliorations to in-game voice chat to bolster team play and callouts. Experience points for contracts and other activities were also buffed, making it easier to unlock new weapons and level up.

What do you think of the fact that Nexon says, “The Finals ‘offers a clear opportunity to become a new and sustainable franchise pillar?’ Do you think that The Finals is worthy of all the hype? Let us know in the comments.