Niko News is a filter of the most important news items and bits of information concerning the games markets of China and Southeast Asia uncovered by Niko each week. Our multilingual analysts review dozens of news sources from several countries, and as a team Niko reduces the long list of articles to 3-4 "must read" items for you. We then provide our Niko analysis to these items, making them relevant and highlighting the importance for the market. This service is one of the many ways we help distill the confusing, conflicting information about the games markets of Asia for our clients and readers. 

Exciting times are ahead with the upcoming launches of RIFT (October) and WoW: Mists of Pandaria. Both games have been approved by the GAPP for launch in China. RIFT will enter beta operated by Shanda in October, and Mists of Pandaria should also launch this year. The scheduled worldwide launch date for Mists of Pandaria is September 25th. With any luck Chinese gamers will also be able to play on local servers on or near the same launch date, but NetEase has not announced when it will begin operations. Niko anticipates that when these two games go into commercial operation in China they will be strong contributors to MMOG revenue. 

According to a post by Marbridge Consulting, China Unicom is rumored to have terminated its partnership with the hot Chinese mobile handset maker Xiaomi, and China Telecom is rumored to possibly follow suit. Xiaomi is known for lower cost Android smartphones, and has a new handset coming out imminently called MI2. The problem that the article cite is high return rate because of the handsets overheating, freezing, frequent rebooting, poor reception and poor after-sales service.Termination of those two partnerships, if it actually occurs, will be detrimental for Xiaomi.  

Gamebar is a company that started as a distributor of packaged PC games in China. They got the license to distribute the Chinese Paladin series of games, or at least the versions released after the company was founded a few years ago. The president of the company is a man with strong connections to the printed publishing industry in China and to CCTV. About two years ago Gamebar relaunched itself as an online game company, hoping to bring more value to packaged PC games via online elements of game play as well as develop and launch traditional Chinese online games for mainland use. Going full circle to the Taiwanese, the region that developed Chinese Paladin, now Gamebar is licensing its online game Ju Xian to Taiwan's Gamania.  It is a notable move based on the company's history.