Our Six-Month Update Report was published Thursday and sent to all subscription clients. That report is not available as a stand-alone product it is only provided to annual subscription holders. The findings include an upward revision of gamer numbers to 120 million for 2010, and a very slight downward revision of forecast online game revenue for 2010 to $4.4 billion from $4.5 billion previously forecast in April. In a recent report by People's Daily on China's online gaming industry, they estimate the market to reach $5 billion and the number of gamers to reach 338 million. Niko uses a different definition of a "gamer," in that we require 60 minutes of game play per month whereas the Chinese government typically accepts anyone who has played for a few minutes in the past 6 months. We've been fairly accurate with revenue forecasts in the past, and we find it unlikely the market will reach $5 billion this year.

The Beijing municipal government maintains its "encouraged" status for online games and cartoons in 2010. The government says that the "cultural and creative" sector accounts for 12.3% of Beijing's 2009 GDP, and that they employ 1.1 million people. The #1 industry in Beijing is finance and the #2 is cultural and creative, in terms of revenue.

Gamesindustry.biz interviewed Lisa Hanson recently and put out an article based on the interview. The gist was that Chinese gamers have embraced SNS games and even hard-core gamers who had been devoted to MMOs have adopted SNS games, sometimes even reducing their gaming time with MMOs to make time for SNS games. They not only enjoy SNS games, but they also are growing weary of the same genres in MMOs over and over. These same gamers may grow weary of SNS games after a few months too. Other blogs have picked up the story and, surprise surprise, have manipulated the meaning. We've read that "Niko says gamers are sick of MMOs" and all sorts of stuff. Just making it clear that we did not say so.