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Sina Weibo has become an unexpected competitor in China's online games market because it is more akin to Twitter rather than an online games platform, but with 140 million users and several popular casual games, it has proven to be indeed formidable. Now it appears that Sina Weibo will launch an open development platform for game developers, which is a feature that most of the competitive SNS sites have already adopted. Sina Weibo offers a much sweeter deal to developers though: 100% of the revenue related to gameplay within one year after the launch, according to a report on Gamelook.com. That beats the revenue sharing offered by other sites.

Social and mobile games play an ever-growing important role in online gaming. Shanda Games, historically a maverick with business models such as changing all of the company's games to Free to Play a year or two before other companies realized it as the model of the future, is emphasizing social and mobile games more than ever. In a recent interview with Reuters, Shanda Games' CEO Alan Tan said that the company has a goal of raising the share of international revenue from 5.4% to 20% in 2-3 years, and an important component of that international growth is to build the company's social and mobile games presence.  International growth, social games and mobile games are the three main buzz words in Chinese online game operator lexicons in 2011.

With more symbolic importance than financial importance, the loss of license for Korea-based Ncsoft's Lineage and Lineage II is probably quite difficult for Shanda. The company has held those licenses for the Korean games for many years, and they expire in two months. Lineage initially launched in 1998, and Lineage II launched in 2003. Shanda acquired 30% of NCsoft China in 2008.  

Niko Partners released our 9^th 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.