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The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has been
more active with the US Trade Representative (USTR) with regard to Chinese
piracy and market entry than the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has
been in the past couple of years. However, as can been implied by the Newsweek
article about Avatar in China, the country still has many issues for foreign
movies. The reality for movies, games and even music is that Chinese market
access is inhibited by regulations. But if a movie whose popularity has led to
sales of $2 billion and counting is restricted in China, it emphasizes that the
market is not in control, the regulators are. On the other hand, foreign games,
movies and music do get in, and there was a recent shift of some of the power from
GAPP to Ministry of Culture and WTO member countries are taking a closer look.
A big market of 70 million gamers exists for foreign games today even with the
regulatory restrictions - you just need to know how to navigate them. And in
the future, the barrier will be lowered to make things easier.
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It is a welcome sight to learn of Tencent's intent to launch
a youth-focused webgame community akin to Club Penguin in the US. There are
other sites, such as 51mole.com in China, but by and large Chinese online
operators have dedicated their work to focus on the 85% of the market who are
adults, rather than the 15% who are under 18 (Source of adult/youth market
split: GAPP 2009). From Niko's efforts to assist foreign companies in launching
online games targeting the youth markets, we know that it is a tough sell to
operators and the marketing spin has to be adjusted to convince operators that
young people are actually an important market segment. Historically the spin
has had to include "offlice ladies" and other early-20s females, as if they are
the same as youth. Hopefully more sites targeting young gamers will encourage
development of "green" games, open the market to more future gamers, and
deflect the negative connotation of online gaming that those same young people
listen to from their parents.
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Giant Interactive's licensed game Empire of Sports was
intended for release before the Beijing Olympics in 2008, but we are happy to
see it is at least in testing in time for the Vancouver Olympics this month.
The game offers a lot of opportunity for innovation of in-game advertising and
perhaps it will be the turning point to help boost that underdeveloped segment
of the games market in China.
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