The predominant business model for Chinese online games, F2P with microtransactions, is changing the face of gaming everywhere. Not only is the trend to migrate many online games to the F2P model, but a recent article in Develop says that even the Xbox 360 is entering that arena. Sony's PS3 offers SOE's Free Realms already, but no other F2P games are available for consoles yet. Assuming that Eedoo's iSec launches as planned in China this summer, and assuming that the Chinese regulation that effectively bans consoles is modified, there could be room for Xbox 360, PS3, Wii and others in China. In that case, where piracy of packaged games is rampant, it will be necessary to offer games via online transaction and perhaps F2P games as well. By doing so the convergence of PC gaming and console gaming becomes more evident.

Vietnam has the largest and most promising online games market in Southeast Asia, among the six countries that Niko now follows (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam). From a regulatory perspective, the online games market there is much like China. From a consumer perspective, the avid gamers flock to Internet cafés and enjoy playing games (before the night time curfew kicks in) because they are an inexpensive form of entertainment. Vietnam has been throttled by high inflation over the past many years, in fact at 21% it has one of the highest inflation rates in the world. The good news for gaming is twofold: 1) while prices of food and other necessities rise, online games remain relatively inexpensive, and 2) the inflation rate is forecast to fall to 15% by December so people will "feel" wealthier and may rejoice by entertaining themselves with, well, more online games.

The CNNIC released its latest study on Chinese online gamers for 2010. Please note that the CNNIC defines a gamer as someone who has logged into a game at least one time in the past six months, and this differs from Niko's definition of a gamer needing to play at least 60 minutes in the past 30 days. According to the CNNIC study, there was a 58.7% increase in the number of multiplayer online games to 110 million people (their total gamer count is more than twice that figure, though not published in this summary).  

Tencent gamers account for 50.4% of all gamers, up 6.2%, while NetEase and Shanda Games gamers represented 35.7% and 15.9% of total gamers, respectively. (We don't know how they define a gamer as belonging to one company or another, but perhaps the gamers state that they play certain games, and those are operated by the named companies).  

The ratio of female to male gamers is 26.9:73.1% (Niko typically estimates 30:70%).  

42.4% of gamers are 10-19 years old, 37.5% are 20-29, and 15.8% are 30-39%. (Niko will publish a study on teenage gamers in August 2011).

Students make up 40.7% with professionals comprising 22.8%.  

81.3% say they play at Internet cafés and 34.8% play at home.  

Finally, 41.3% of online gamers spent some money on games at least one time in 2010.