Potential For Chinese Online Gaming Market Huge

Thanks to GameGossip for pointing out the NPD article discussing the swift growth of online gaming in China. According to the piece, "In 2002, China's online game industry pocketed 910 million yuan(about US$110 million), compared to 310 million yuan (about US$37.34 million) in the previous year.", and "the number of online game players... doubled from four million of the previous year." In related news, since most Chinese online gamers don't have their own PC, CNET is reporting on the consolidation of Net cafes "under the management of larger, mainly state-owned companies."

Reminds me of Arcades

[vasqzr]

In related news, since most Chinese online gamers don't have their own PC, CNET is reporting on the consolidation of Net cafes "under the management of larger, mainly state-owned companies."

Reminds me of arcades here in the USA. They were incredibly popular because the home gaming consoles were so far behind coin-op hardware. They could have a huge boom over there, with net-cafe's instead of arcades. Does Nolan Bushnell know about this? Better start opening up some Chinese Chuckie Cheese's.

Re:Reminds me of Arcades

[YanceyAI]

Might drive technology changes in the way we LAN, too, if demand is that strong.

Chinese videogame...

[pmz]

would that be like America's Army but the opponents are religion, knowledge, and representative government?

Re:Chinese videogame...

[MMaestro]

China's Army? Seems silly, but if the technological barriers can be overcome, a MMOFPS game (ie. Planetside only better) would be pretty sweet.

Triads

[advocate_one]

The Chinese Government is going to have a heck of a fight on their hands trying to keep the Triads out of the action...

OT games.slashdot ad

[realdpk]

It's screwing up the HTML rendering, so that the article is pushed all the way left. The comments are all OK though. Anyone else see this? Mozilla browser, of course.

Re:OT games.slashdot ad

[theNote]

Its messed up in IE also.

Re:OT games.slashdot ad

[simoniker]

Thanks for the heads-up, guys, a rogue horizontal ad got into the vertical ad-space and caused havoc, havoc, I tell you. We're looking at it.

Re:OT games.slashdot ad

[aftk2]

While you're looking at it, why don't you take a look at the questionmarket ads that are still causing popups? ("Still" as of yesterday evening).

Wouldn't rampant piracy hinder this?

[johannesg]

It may be a huge market, but if nobody ever pays for his games it isn't actually worth much...

Re:Wouldn't rampant piracy hinder this?

[KD5YPT]

Online gaming might actually help hinder this, since the servers that connect the game can check whether its a pirated copy or not (CD-keys and etc). Sure it might not be fool-proof, but it would help.

What type of games?

[antdude]

Are they the same games we play in U.S.A.?

News at 11

[Scrameustache]

There are over one BILLION chineese.

Potential for EVERYTHING is huge is china. Talk about non-news.