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. 

Lisa Cosmas Hanson, Managing Partner for Niko Partners, will be moderating a panel this upcoming Saturday on Chinese mobile games at SxSW 2013. Please email Lisa if you will be attending SxSW and would like to set up a meeting.

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced its 2013 Broadband China plan, and will submit it to the State Council for approval. The plan calls for rapid increase of fixed-line broadband access to the homes throughout China (including 180,000 villages) as well as rapid increase of the 3G user base, among other things. As broadband access expands, online gaming expands. In some of the less affluent cities and towns, though, residents do not have home PCs and will still do most gaming at Internet cafés or on mobile devices. As PC prices continue to drop and broadband access fees fall while penetration rates rise, we expect more home PC penetration, which also leads to more online gaming usage.  

Perfect World has launched a portal for its upcoming Unity3D dancing game "Touch" and the game will be client-based for PC, browser-based as a webgame, available on mobile platforms, and also playable on TV using a set-top box and a 3D camera. This is one of the first instances that we have heard of where a major online game operator is launching a game for use on TV in the same manner as a console game would be. 

Tencent's WeChat (Weixin) is taking the IM world by storm, taking game's market share away from other types of social networking services in China, and making a global push. Any of our readers who have not heard of WeChat need to look into it. As noted in the Tech in Asia article linked above, Tencent launched an ad campaign for WeChat in Indonesia and Tencent disclosed that as a result, its daily user growth increased from 30,000 to 90,000 people. PER DAY. You need to know about WeChat if you are following games, Tencent, IM clients, etc.  

China's mobile games developer Locojoy launched the wildly popular I'm MT Online on iOS in late 2012. The game gained a surprising amount of traction in a short time, and after merely a few months has 2 million registered users and 1 million active users - soaring to become a leading mobile title for iOS. The big question had been when the game would be available on Android, and the answer is now in March 2013. Locojoy is entertaining bids from various distribution suitors for the Android version of the game, but has not made a decision yet - per an article in the Marbridge Daily.