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. 

An article in People's Daily, abstracted in Gamelook, discussed the "2012 China Game Industry Overseas Market Report" issued by the government. In it we learn that 40 Chinese games companies exported 177 self-developed games for a total of $570 million last year. Of those 177 games, 103 are webgames ($228 million), 65 are client-based games ($331 million) and 13 are mobile games ($11 million). The total is 57.5% higher than in 2011.  

Fifteen Chinese ministries are joining forces to combat and prevent online gaming addiction, per an article in the People's Daily. The article also stated that there are at least 150 million Internet users who are under the age of 18, about 28% of the total Internet user population. Online games are one of the leading apps for web use and there have been some very sad cases of game addiction among youth in China (and in all other countries, we hasten to add).  

Tech in Asia highlighted some Sina Weibo data that is worth repeating here. Of the 500 million registered Sina Weibo users, only 46 million are active on a daily basis, and the company has stated in the past that only about 10% of its registered users are considered to be active users. Niko believes that this concern - that data is overstated - is not constrained just to Weibo accounts. 

With multiple mobile phones per person and multiple online identities in games, it is difficult to support data that says there are several hundred million active online gamers (for example). Niko has conservatively estimated 180 million online gamers and 192 million mobile gamers in 2012, and will update those figures in our upcoming reports in 2013.