Niko's 2011 Southeast Asian Games Market Regional Report is out! Contact info@nikopartners.com to find out more or check out our store.

The Chinese government continues its pursuit of real name registrations for gamers and microbloggers to the widest extent possible. The online game companies have employed technology to require gamers to register with real names, though in the past this technology was bypassed fairly easily. Sina Weibo, boasting 250 million accounts (not all are unique users), had used a technique called "verify" in which the company write a "V" next to the user name of all bloggers whose accounts had been verified. In a recent presentation by CNN's Kristie Lu Stout Niko Partners learned that even though it may say "V," it did not mean that the account was actually verified. Now Sina has asked people to register their real names and contact info, and for that they will receive an "honor medal." But it is unlikely that the promise of an "honor medal" will lure many people to declare their contact information who would not have willingly done so otherwise. Sina Weibo is an increasingly popular site for social games and a strong competitor against Tencent Weibo and SNS sites in China for such games. 

A recent article in the Chinese language news site People.com.cn stated that the reason for the falling P/E ratios of Chinese online game operator stocks traded on foreign exchanges is that the American market is having a tough time and that foreign investors do not recognize the excellent track records of these companies. Actually, the investors probably recognize that growth in the market has shifted from traditional MMOGs, the bread and butter of these publicly traded companies, to social games and other online game segments. Growth in the number of gamers and overall game market revenue is still impressive in China. The investors may be waiting for these online operators to differentiate themselves and launch hit titles that are a departure from the traditional games that the gamers have grown tired of.