[Click eStock] Naver Expands Metaverse 'Zepeto' Territory in Earnest

Forming a Joint Venture with a Casual Game Company and Investing in Blockchain Company Shares

Naver Zepeto User Interface

[Asia Economy Reporter Minwoo Lee] Naver's (NAVER) metaverse (extended virtual world) service 'Zepeto' operator, affiliate Naver Z, is making full-scale investments in gaming, blockchain, and more. Analysts expect business expansion through diversification of Zepeto content and investment in new technologies.

On the 7th, Hana Financial Investment maintained its 'Buy' rating on Naver with this background and raised the target price by about 22% to 550,000 KRW. The closing price the previous day was 338,500 KRW.

Hana Financial Investment focused on Naver's affiliate Naver Z. Since securing 220 billion KRW in investments last month from SoftBank, HYBE, and others, Naver Z has continued investing in Zepeto-related services.

Starting with acquiring a 40% stake in the metaverse joint venture created with Supercat last November for 400 million KRW, they established another joint venture. On the 3rd, they announced acquiring a 33.33% stake in the joint corporation 'Pinocchio,' established with casual game developer LunoSoft, for 4 billion KRW. On the same day, Naver Z also announced the establishment of its Hong Kong subsidiary 'Naver Z Limited' with an investment of about 4.7 billion KRW. Additionally, they invested 1 billion KRW in 'PersonaSpace,' a company specializing in virtual humans, and 500 million KRW in 'Hederaq,' a new blockchain company founded by former Blockchain Labs CEO Eom Ji-yong, who developed the vaccine authentication program 'Koov.'

Zepeto is expected to add user-participation game development features similar to Roblox in the future, but in the short term, it appears to be aiming to expand Zepeto content through the release of official game maps. Yoon Ye-ji, a researcher at Hana Financial Investment, explained, "In the past, official maps where games could be played were publicly released through official accounts, but they remained very simple in operation. However, recently, more advanced game services with player-versus-player (PvP) elements, such as the collection game 'Slime Party' and 'Animal Expedition' with collection features, have been added."

Considering that Zepeto's main user base is early teenagers and that LunoSoft, which established the joint venture, specializes in casual game development, this trend is expected to continue. Yoon Ye-ji of Hana Financial Investment predicted, "Zepeto is at a turning point for full-scale business expansion by diversifying game content and investing in new technologies such as blockchain."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.