China's Ministry of Culture says that the Chinese online games sector is recovering from a slump that began in 2010. In a recent press release by the MOC, the ministry states that China's online gaming industry is growing and particularly attributes international business, mobile games and webgames as leading proponents of growth. The MOC anticipates that by 2015 the market will reach $15.9 billion, including those segments. Niko Partners excludes international sales from our Chinese games market size figures, as we discuss only the mainland China domestic market in our China studies. We will update our forecast later this month for our clients, but as of our last market forecast we anticipated that China's market size in 2015 would be $14.6 billion, excluding mobile and international. It is reasonable that including those two the market would achieve the MOC's estimate. We will confirm in our Annual Review and Forecast report due out in late April. Incidentally, Niko did not see the same slump that MOC mentions. We feel that a decline in the growth rates achieved prior to 2010 was natural and healthy for any market, as the rates had exceeded 60% per year for a couple years before that. 

According to ComScore, which recently initiated coverage of the Thailand audience, social networking represents the most engaging online activity in that country. Social networking accounted for 29.8% of time spent online in February. Portals and Entertainment content were used by 98% of the online population in Thailand that month.  

While the proposed copyright changes discussed in a recent Slashdot article do not pertain directly to online games, one can easily make the mental progression that if music IP is barely protected, then it will eventually be an issue for the games industry and other forms of digital entertainment as well. This article mentions that Article 46 states that one does not need consent to make recordings of another person's musical work if 3 months have passed since such work was published. Article 48 states that merely paying a fee to a regulatory body within one month of using someone else's musical IP will be sufficient. The writing is on the wall if this legislation passes.