StarCraft II's July 27th launch in most major
geographies except Japan and China should be a big day in the 2010 games
market. The game is sure to be a success in South Korea, where gamers still flock to play the original StarCraft,
especially since StarCraft II will be free in Korea to gamers with an active World of Warcraft subscription.
As Chinese gamers are still waiting for WoW's Wrath of the Lich King to
be approved, it seems unlikely that three Blizzard titles (WLK, WoW: Cataclysm,
and StarCraft II) would all be approved for release in China in 2010. Blizzard,
it's Chinese operator NetEase, Chinese Blizzard game fans, and Niko are all
hopeful though. Pirated
sales of WarCraft were one reason that WoW was such an instant blockbuster game
in China (everyone knew the franchise already), and we will wait and see what
happens with StarCraft II in China.
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According to a report from the NPD Group, 48% of PC games
sold in the US in 2009 were sold digitally. There has been a year-on-year decline in physical game sales so far and
physical unit sales just barely edged out digital distribution last year. A
majority of the sales were through Valve's Steam store and Bigfishgames.com, as
well as through Worldofwarcraft.com and EA.com. Not only is this trend a greener approach to the video game industry by sparing everyone boxes and plastic
pieces, but the success of digital sales is encouraging for the developers and
publishers fighting piracy across the world. In China we have witnessed pirate
sales of physical copies of games plummet as illegal downloads take their
place. We believe that a business-led solution to the piracy problem in China
would be more successful than a regulatory solution, and we hope that leaders
such as Valve go to market here as soon as there are enough approved titles to
make it worthwhile for them.
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While admittedly our
audience is too small to draw conclusions for all of China, a sneak peek into
the findings from Niko's latest Chinese Gamer Focus Groups (12 groups in 2
cities) show that women do buy virtual items and spend money in casual game
virtual economies, but not at the rate of twice as much as men as the PlaySpan
and VGMarket study found in other parts of the world. Our Focus Groups Findings
Report will be released to clients and available for sale on August 2nd.
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