Everything you need to know this week about the games market in Asia
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.
Happy Lunar New Year!
新年快乐- xīnnián kuàilè! Happy Lunar New Year to all of our readers! May the Year of the Fire Monkey be prosperous for you all.
Xiaomi released the Xiaomi Game Center's 2015 annual report. The report shows that the Xiaomi Game Center had 1.45 billion downloads in terms of games distributed, compared with 780 million in 2014, generating revenue of RMB 2.6 billion (their channel fee + publishing fee) for the full year of 2015. The revenue split for developers in 2015 totaled RMB 1.1 billion. The number of paying users on their mobile platform increased by 55.68% QoQ, and ARPU increased by 33.1% QoQ. Top game genres on the platform include "casual & creative" (29%), "parkour & running" (12%) and "online RPG" (10%).
On February 5th as a lead-up to the New Year, the Communist Party of China's Organization Department has created a Wechat account to distribute 300,000-yuan worthof lucky money. In a clever twist, the passwords were all phrases from President Xi Jinping's New Year greetings - for example, "aslongaswepersevere, dreamswillcometrue."
Shanda Group is planning to create China's first virtual reality park in China with the help of The Void, a US-based entertainment company that specializes in VR.
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.
