Chinese Gaming Market to Reach $2.1B In 2010

GameDailyBiz is reporting on a study indicating the Chinese gaming market is likely to hit $2.1 Billion in 2010. From the article: "While much of this growth has been and will continue to be fueled by the popularity of MMORPGs, Niko points to another trend: the rise of casual games. Niko believes that premium casual games will reach MMORPG-like popularity over the next few years and will achieve 40 percent of all online revenue by 2010. 'Chinese gamers' passion for massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) has extended to the casual and premium casual segments,' said Lisa Cosmas Hanson, managing partner of Niko Partners. 'Premium casual games provide new gamers greater access to the online game market and open up an alternate source of entertainment for hardcore gamers.'"

Re:Cultural change in game

But in WoW, players will just keep on trolling and nobody really cares.

Well... Most of the players don't care because you can't really betray anyone because the only thing you can do to each other is call each other names, ninja loot, or maybe scam trade.

N

Re:Cultural change in game

Right now most games are developed by western countries

Um, you can't be serious. Japan and Korea produce tons of games.

Let me get this straight...

Are we talking 2.1 Billion Dollars or 2.1 Billion pirated copies???

Re:Let me get this straight...

I think it's dollars.
My question is, is that revenue just from sale and subscriptions of games or does that include gold farming businesses in China?

2.1 Billion Dollars?

Really? That's not very much. When you consider that China has a mainland population of 1.3 billion (compared to the US's 300 million), $2.1 billion dollars pales in comparison to the $6 billion dollar industry that the US has become. Or to put that into ratios:

China - 63:39
States - 780:39

I'd say that China still has a long way to go when it comes to developing a game industry. Sure, the hard cash number of $2.1 billion does sound impressive, but that does have to be balanaced against the amount of money that must be spent to reach that level of market penetration. If the gaming public is spread across China (and not centered in a specific area like Shanghai), the costs of reaching that market could well whittle away those profits. Greater market penetration might result in much higher returns.

Re:2.1 Billion Dollars?

Good points. This number is not tied directly into total population but rather the rise of a middle class in China that has the time and money to play these games. Another factor of course is the availability of machines...as access to them rises, so will

Re:2.1 Billion Dollars?

Personally, I think there's a little bit of discrepancy between US and China's gaming markets

We're talking about online casual games. This means the equivalent of something like Yahoo! Games (or basically an assortment of minigames), or online RPGS only. I

Re:2.1 Billion Dollars?

You need to adjust that for per-household income.

premium

Premium casual gaming is when you play casually for 12 hours and then afterwards look up at the clock and say: "hey, not bad! I am going to treat myself to another 1.2 hours of casual gaming for 'free'".

MMMORG are great for publishers

Especially for a market as large as China with such rampant piracy. The revenue stream keeps coming as long as the content is interesting and worthwhile. As for pirating a copy, well that doesn't matter because you can't play if you don't pay the monthly fee.

Further reading...

There's some further reading at U.S. News & World Report's site, which has an issue detailing more about shoppers in China and India [usnews.com]. From the issue:

When they talk about China and India, western business executives can't stop using the word "scale." Take the experience of Blizzard Entertainment, based in Irvine, Calif. It took a year to attract a million paying subscribers in North America for World of Warcraft, its popular online video game; in one month, the company signed up 1.5 million for the Chinese version of the game. How about cellphones? There are 400 million cellphone users in China, and, on average, they replace their phones every three to six months. Consumers in China can choose from something like 900 different models, compared with only 80 or so in the United States. Companies like Samsung offer a new handset model in China as often as once a week.

Those statistics, if correct, boggle my mind.

Much cheaper to play

Wow subscriptions are closer to $2 usd there versus $15 here.

The Subscription Model is necessary

China is a good example of what happens to media production when piracy is rampant, the only content professionally created is content that the developer is guaranteed to be paid for. In the early 2000's (can't remember the year) I met a representative of a Chinese game company at the GDC. He said that their only hope for staying solvent was to find a US publisher to bring their games to the States because there was no money to be made in China under the traditional game development model. I beleive EA has said publicly that the only reason they release anything in the region (excluding Japan of course) is to "prime the market" for the day when piracy is no longer a problem there - build up the franchises now with subsidies from their successul regions because they were actually losing money with every title they shipped. Casual pirates should look to China to see what the logical end-result of their actions are: no money for new content development.

Re:The Subscription Model is necessary

China is a good example of what happens to media production when piracy is rampant, the only content professionally created is content that the developer is guaranteed to be paid for. In the early 2000's (can't remember the year) I met a representative of

Re:The Subscription Model is necessary

If there was a lack of interest or new content, the games industry and the time spent playing wouldn't be growing as rapidly as it is today. Chinese teenagers aren't loosing interest, they're only just getting interested.

Piracy has been around aslong a few

Communism II

Today Trevor Chan, developer of the acclaimed game Capitalism II where the player manages a corporate empire, today announced that he will be "localizing" the game to the emerging Chinese video game market, and renaming it Communism II.

As the communism ref

Simple math for all you boozy gamers...

5 million subscribers on Warcraft (number is arguable, but to scale)

So, at $15/month (average MMO subscription, give or take) we have a single product responsible for almost $1 billion in annual revenue.

Granted, there are a lot of expenses that eat into it

Re:Simple math for all you boozy gamers...

The problem with an affiliate program for WoW right now is that, despite the ungodly immense revinue it's generating, the profits are a bit weak. Remember this [slashdot.org] article from a while back? This was before the Chinese release and the announcement of Burning C

Re:Simple math for all you boozy gamers...

Far from being weak, the profits are literally sickening.

First off, let's correct a few mistakes. You are confusing Blizzard with Vivendi games. The article was referring to Vivendi, the publisher. Two different companies, so you can't really use the numbe

That's a lot of CD's

The pirates must have a hell of an infrastructure to move 20 billion CD's a year to the Chinese population.

Anyone else?

For some reason I read the headline as:

Chinese Gold Farming Market to Reach $2.1B In 2010

Bah, who am I kidding? It probably passed that mark long ago...