Niko News on Chinese and Southeast Asian
Video Game Markets
Volume 75
May 2011

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Weekly Twitter Posts

PRC prison laborers rumored to be forced to be online game gold farmers for guards. Years ago, others forced to make fake PS2s in Shenzhen
27 May

1 mil people signed up for PopCap's PvZ on RenRen already, says Gwertzman. This is PopCap's first Chinese game launch
20 May

Lenovo's Eedoo biz unit announced that it will launch the iSec (previously eBox) in the 2nd half of 2011 in China aiming to sell 1 mil units
9 May

Niko Partners: China's Online Games Industry Outperforms National GDP Growth
5 May

Lisa Hanson to speak at Stanford's SPRIE on the innovation of Chinese online operators on April 27th 23 Apr

RenRen.com, China's 2nd largest SNS behind Tencent's Qzone, and largest real-name SNS (ex-Qzone) filed for IPO on 4/15/11 on NYSE as RENN.
19 Apr

Kaixin001's "Happy City", similar to CityVille by Zynga, had 2 million installations in the first 10 days.
18 Apr

Tencent and Intel form research center in China to develop services for tablets and gaming http://on.wsj.com/fZdNrV 4:05 PM Apr 13th via CoTweet    

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E3 2011

Schedule an appointment for E3 with Niko Partners! Contact evan@nikopartners.com to schedule a meeting with Evan Van Zelfden, Megan Carriker or Lisa Cosmas Hanson.  

The latest US investment for Chinese online operator The9 is in the social games space via funding of CrowdStar. Other moves by the operator this year were in investment in OpenFeint for mobile social games and last year the purchase of Red 5 Studios, developer of the highly anticipated MMORPG Firefall. 

Online gamers continue to flock to high quality games. The leading game operators, Tencent and NetEase, had huge growth in 2010 over 2009, and the Q1 earnings of some of the other operators such as Perfect World show that not all operators nor games are equally popular. Q1 results are not all in yet.

Sina Weibo is an unexpected competitor in the social games operation segment, offering simple games on the wildly popular miniblog site. Not to miss out on any popular trend, Tencent has launched Tencent Weibo as a new entrant in that arena. As with several other Tencent services QQ users will not need to seek out Tencent Weibo, it is automatically available to them making it easy to use.  

Niko Partners 2011 China's Game Industry Report

Niko Partners released our 9th China's Games Industry Annual Review & Forecast Report on April 30th. The 78-page report is chock full of data and analysis we wrote based on our proprietary data collection and market model. After conducting more than 1,200 surveys and interviews in 10 cities and gathering 70,000+ points of data, we were able to compile this important market intelligence study that is a must-read for any company serious about success in China's games market or related fields of business.

 

Visit the research store on www.nikopartners.com or contact evan@nikopartners.com to purchase.

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 and Southeast Asia.

Niko Partners is the premier provider of market intelligence and custom research services focused on the video game industry in China and Southeast Asia. Since 2003 we have provided critical information to the world's leading game publishers, developers, hardware makers and game service providers. Renowned trade associations, policy makers, and hedge fund managers turn to Niko for key data on the Chinese and Southeast Asian video game industries. Niko's primary data, analysis, market models, and five-year forecast by game segments and hardware platforms help decision-makers understand market trends.
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