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. 

On January 28th, the English language newspaper China Daily published an article that implied China's Ministry of Culture was considering overturning the 13-year ban on game consoles. This caused the stock prices of Sony and Nintendo to soar in Japan, up 9% or so on the day. 

After the news hit, Niko Partners was inundated with press requests for interviews about the console ban and our opinion on whether it would be overturned, and what it would mean if it were. Luckily for us, each interview was a bit different so we got to answer a range of questions on the topic. Lisa was quoted and interviewed by five journalists that week, and four of the reports have come out so far. 

Suffice it to say that we do not think the ban will be overturned, and we do not think that it should have moved the stock prices that much even if it were to be overturned. Here are the links - you may enjoy reading all of them for answers on the range of questions. The Bloomberg interview is a video link, which is blocked in China, incidentally. 

• Bloomberg TV
• Wired
• Business Week
• Venture Beat

Niko has written that many Chinese mobile phone users have more than one phone, so the number of handsets that are sold does not indicate the number of people who are actually using them. A recent MIIT statistic we found in a Tech In Asia post, though, sparked our interest because it says that there are more than 1.1 billion mobile users in China now, with 82.6% of the population using mobile devices. In addition, in Beijing there are 157.2 mobile phones per 100 people, Shanghai has 128 phones per 100 people, and there are more than 100 phones per 100 people in each of Guangdong, Zhejiang, Fujian, and Inner Mongolia (Tech in Asia was surprised by this last one and so are we, especially since Lisa has ridden horses and camped in that province and could hardly find running water, let alone technology devices there). Truly remarkable.  

In recent months we have seen several e-commerce companies enter the games market by adding webgaming platforms to their services. Taobao opened one in June 2012, Dandang opened one in September, 360Buy opened one in October, Gome opened one in January 2013, and next we anticipate Suning Online to open one as well. It isn't clear why they all want a webgames platform, or what type of games they each plan to offer, but it is clear that the e-commerce companies of China want a piece of the gaming market.  

In a weibo post by Nancy Zhou, CEO of Bihan Internet Technology (closely related to Ubisoft in China), Mrs. Zhou announced that Assassin's Creed III was denied a license for China operations because it is rated for 18+ years old elsewhere, and the government didn't think it was appropriate as is. The company will appeal and try again after the Spring Festival.