Niko News on China's Video Game Market
Volume 42
July 2010

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Weekly Twitter Posts

Bill Roper, chief creative officer at Cryptic Studios, is to keynote the third GDC China event http://bit.ly/c0cmps 3:17 PM July 3rd from web

Smuggled iPhone 4s respond to keen Chinese appetite for latest electronics - the cost? over $1000 each http://bit.ly/a1HaCR (via @niubi) about 20 hours ago via CoTweet

Starting 8/1 MOC will regulate SNS games in the same way as online games http://bit.ly/bDSeJq 4:30 PM Jun 26th via CoTweet

MOC announced rules aligned with GAPP's to ban harmful content from Chinese gamers under age 18 http://bit.ly/bDSeJq 7:00 PM Jun 25th via web

If only the US govt would support US game companies at China Joy as the Chinese govt supported its own at E3 this year http://bit.ly/c5trzH 7:08 PM Jun 23rd via web

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 After acquiring San Francisco-based Mochi Media of the US earlier this year, Shanda launched a Chinese version of the open development platform for flash developers this month. Mochi Media had over 100 million people playing their games one year ago, and we'll see if it takes off in China.Mochi Media's platform provides free games for players, something Shanda already knows a lot about.
It might help feed Shanda's move into SNS gaming too.  We had expected the acquisition of Mochi to first help Shanda with its international expansion, but it seems that the first step is actually to help build more base in China.
To complement its wildly popular Qzone SNS, Tencent has developed an SNS named "Friends" to specifically target college students and white-collar workers. This is a higher income demographic and one that could prove lucrative as a subset business for a slice of it's 400 million users currently using QQ and other services.
All Asian eyes are on StarCraft 2 in Korea, and it is a smart move for Blizzard to launch it free of charge to those with an active World of Warcraft subscription in order to build a strong user base. If (when) StarCraft 2 launches in China our guess is that the same would hold true there too. It might also be testing the water to see if the rumored consideration of changing WoW to F2P would be successful in Asia. That is just our speculation though.

Niko News is just part of the market intelligence experience offered by Niko Partners 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.
If you have any questions or if you have a project that could use our assistance, please let us know at info@nikopartners.com or contact Megan Carriker at 336-326-5595 or megan@nikopartners.com