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. 

China Joy takes place this week in Shanghai July 25-27 and Niko Partners will attend the show. If nothing else, the cosplayers and very loud music at each booth will be entertaining, especially in the 100 degree heat. :)

NetDragon had considered listing its 91.com mobile app store on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange but this week announced that it has agreed to sell the entity to Chinese Baidu for $1.09 billion. In 2012, app downloads from 91.com surpassed 10 billion, and is recognized as one of the top three app stores in China.  

China's Dream Square, founded in 2009 by a young former executive of 9You, is a hot webgame and mobile game development firm in Shanghai. The company was chosen as one of the "2012 China's Top 10 Emerging Game Companies" by the China Game Industry Annual Conference in January. The company licensed the rights to develop PAL Online for mainland China from SoftStar in Taiwan, and the game launched this week and is rumored to be performing very well. The PAL series (aka Chinese Paladin) is very popular, and in fact has been one of the only franchise titles to have had success in packaged sales as a single-player PC game in recent years. One reason is that the Chinese government historically approved sales of that game at the same time as it was launched officially in Taiwan so there was no lag time for the pirates to get illegal versions on the market, and another reason is that Chinese gamers are fascinated by the "Legend of Sword and Fairy" story line. Bringing this offline game to the webgame platform will likely be a big hit among gamers. 

CNNIC released the 32nd Statistical Report on the Internet in China this week. There are now 591 million Internet users, 464 million mobile Internet users, and Internet users spend an average of 21.7 hours per week online. In addition, online games has slipped in the ranking of leading Internet applications from #5 a couple of years ago down to #7 this year, after IM, search, news, music, blogging and online video. Last year online games had slipped to #6, but blogging has now ascended and is the newer entrant in the leading apps list. Microblogs are known as "weibo" in China and have soared in popularity over the years.