Weekly Twitter Posts
Lots of Chinese chatter about tightening i-cafe regs this week http://bit.ly/cClsiz
7:47 AM Mar 5th
via web
Jesse Schell's great DICe presentation - worth viewing! http://g4tv.com/videos/44277/DICE-2010-Design-Outside-the-Box-Presentation/
10:28 AM Mar 3rd
via web
Lisa Hanson to moderate panel at GamesBeat@GDC "Gaming Without Borders" http://bit.ly/9lYbNu - Wed 3/10 3:30pm Moscone North, rm 305/307
9:42 AM Mar 3rd
via web
Lisa Hanson to attend GDC next week. Contact info@nikopartners.com for an appointment.
3:06 PM Mar 1st
via web
DDO's increase in revenues after switching to F2P = gamers spend as much/more on free games, just like in China http://bit.ly/95hrdk
11:09 PM Feb 26th from web
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Welcome to Niko News, just part of the market intelligence experience offered to help you better understand the thriving video game market of China.
Niko
Partners is the premier provider of market intelligence and custom
research services on China's video game industry. There are more than 70 million Chinese gamers eager to play hit titles on systems with the
latest technologies. With Niko Partners market intelligence services,
you can get to know these gamers, find Chinese partners, and use our
actionable market data to build and execute your strategic plan.
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The fury felt by some people over a pronouncement from a
member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) may
have some legs to it. At first blush the pronouncement suggested that privately
held Internet cafés should be banned in China and that they should be replaced
by state owned cafés to keep tighter controls on activities of patrons within
the cafés. This type of suggestion has
been made at CPPCC meetings in the past, but never to this extreme. There has
been lots of commentary in the Chinese press regarding the suggestion, and most
people seem to be opposed. However, the Ministry of Culture agrees that tighter
controls may be necessary to insure that minors are kept out of the Internet
cafés and that better monitoring software should be installed in every café on
every PC. It would be unlikely for a ban on independently owned cafés to
actually happen, but tighter controls are likely.
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It is earnings season and we are watching the results of the
Chinese online game operators as they are announced. The industry itself is
doing well, and both Perfect World and Shanda, who announced earnings this
week, had significant increases over the same period a year earlier. Perfect World's
game Zhu Xian seems to be doing quite well. Giant Interactive did not have the
same experience, and had a significant decrease in net income in Q4 2009 over
the same quarter in 2008.
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Yet another Chinese online game company has announced that
it will launch one of its online games outside of China, this time starting in
Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and Malaysia. Incidentally, with the increase in
exports of Chinese online games to Asia and beyond, it is good timing for Niko
Partners to have launched DFC-Niko Emerging Markets, which will cover 10 new
markets 8 of which are in Asia, so that we can see from the importing market's
perspective the popularity of Chinese online games overseas.
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If you have any questions or if you have a project that could use our assistance, please let us know at info@nikopartners.com
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