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. 

Amazon launched their Android app store in China for distribution of paid and free apps over the weekend. This came as a surprise to all who read the announcement and saw the news about it. Amazon will face competition from more than 500 other Android app stores there already, but that market is clearly ripe for some consolidation and maybe Amazon can take advantage of that. It will be interesting to watch whether foreign mobile game developers choose to distribute through Amazon or if they instead will pursue partnerships with companies that do culturalization of games and far more than just "publishing," such as Yodo1, iDreamSky and others.  

NetEase is the latest publicly traded online game operator to recognize that first person shooter (FPS) games are hot in China, and announced that it will commercially launch its game on May 14th (Chinese game site here). Some gamers who have played it in closed beta testing have said it is very similar to Cross Fire with only one new element ("biochemical blasting mode").  

As reported in Marbridge Daily and 17173.com, the Ministry of Culture announced its 2012 Report on the Chinese Internet Café Market on 4/28/13. There are now 136,000 I-cafés (Niko's estimate was 138,000), with 11.95 million PCs (Niko's estimate was 11.0-12.4 million). Revenue of I-cafés has fallen overall by 13.2% since 2011.

The three biggest areas of demand in I-cafés are online games, music, and search, and online video is rising fast as well. I-café usage will expand in Tiers 2 and 3 (Niko would add tier 4 to that list), but overall usage will continue to decline as home PC and broadband penetration increases. 40% of I-cafés are now owned by chains, whereas more than 75% of I-cafés had been independently owned even just a few years ago. This channel remains very important for online games distribution.