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Every week, our analysts review dozens of news sources, from multiple countries, in multiple languages. From this, we give you the stories that are most important, and the analysis to tell you why.
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Tencent had its highest profit in Q3 2015 thanks to messaging services, video and digital games. Games via PCs and mobile devices both helped boost net income to $1.2 billion for the 3-month period. While costs are rising, that is still impressive net income to say the least. There were 650 million monthly active WeChat customers at the end of the quarters. Also, Tencent shares have surged 35% this year whereas top competitor Alibaba's shares have fallen 22%.
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This story reinforces the trend of TV-based gaming that Niko Partners highlighted in our June 2015 report on that topic. Tencent announced the "miniStation", the company's new mini-console. Any manufacturer who works with Tencent can design its own version of miniStation, which runs on Android-based Tencent OS. Players install an app (iOS or Android) and use their smartphones as controllers, to operate the games played though TVs. The app also enables social gaming via WeChat and QQ. The miniStation even has its own controller, so if playing together one person can use his phone and the other person can use the controller. Tencent announced Skyworth and Lenovo are among the hardware partners, and announced several games including Naruto, Modern Combat 5, Asphalt 8: Airport, n.o.v.a3, Implosion, FIFA, We MOBA, and Infinity Blade.
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Take-Two Interactive announced the closure of the 2K office in Shanghai, citing the cancellation of Borderlands Online as the primary reason for the closure and lay off of the 150 employees there. Take-Two still has a team in Shanghai working on NBA 2K OL and a testing studio in Chengdu, along with the company's Singapore regional office.
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Steam officially launched its China store, using Chinese RMB and supporting Alipay and UnionPay cards. The company is using local parity pricing, enabling the price of games to be lower in China than they are in the U.S. Steam also employs local parity pricing in Southeast Asia and other emerging markets, and it is a productive strategy that other companies also use. For example, Fallout 4 is sold at $59.99 in the US but only RMB 199 ($31) in China. GTA 5 is sold at $59.99 in the US but only RMB 189 ($30) in China.
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Marbridge Daily reported on China issuing draft policies to combat e-Commerce counterfeit sales and online intellectual property rights infringement. The General Office of China's State Council stated it will crack down on counterfeit products sold over the Internet by strengthening and enforcing laws and regulations. It will also tackle counterfeiting of famous trademarks and foreign brands. It will monitor Internet literature, music, movies, TV shows, animation, software and other copyrighted products and combat infringement. The government will rely on the national copyright monitoring platform to track app stores, cloud storage, weibo, WeChat, and other platforms.
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Niko News is just one part of the strategy and expertise offered by Niko Partners to help our clients better understand and successfully navigate the thriving games markets of China and Southeast Asia.
Niko Partners is the leading provider of market intelligence, custom research, and consulting services focused on the games industries in China and Southeast Asia. Since 2003 we have provided critical information to the world's leading game publishers, developers, hardware makers, and game service providers as well as to government policymakers, trade associations, and institutional investors.
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