Three years ago, in early 2020, Wuhan announced the closure of the city due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Three months into my family’s confinement as residents of Wuhan I wrote “A personal account of gaming and life in Wuhan during the COVID-19 outbreak” to share my story about gaming during the initial Wuhan lockdown with Niko’s [...]
Did you know that esports has entered its golden jubilee this year? It has been 50+ years since the first-ever esports event took place at Stanford University in 1972 when 24 players competed in an Intergalactic Spacewar tournament, and the winner received a year’s subscription to the Rolling Stone magazine. Fast forward to 2023, technological advancement [...]
As we start the new year, we celebrate 21 years of providing high integrity data, insights and analysis as local experts with global perspective. To kick things off, once again we provide a set of predictions for the video game industry across the 14 markets we cover: Mainland China, Japan, South Korea, Chinese Taipei, Indonesia, Malaysia, [...]
The first floor of the PC gaming area at e-ZONe in Osaka, Japan. Tourism is one of the many industries that enjoy positive spillover effects from the fast-growing video game and esports markets in Asia. There is a strong intersection of esports and tourism in particular, and one aspect of interest is esports hotels. Niko [...]
According to our Esports Tracker, the PUBG IP led the way in esports for the Asia-10 region in 2022. 22.2% of all esports tournaments held in the Asia-10 region featured either PUBG Mobile, PUBG, or Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) as one of their tournament games, which constitute 3 of the 10 most played games across the [...]
Game Show & Trade, All-Round, popularly known as G-Star, first took place in 2005 and is South Korea’s premier annual games conference. G-Star 2022 was the first full in-person event in 2 years. The event was organized by the Korea Association of Game industry (K-GAMES), managed by G-STAR Organizing Committee and Busan IT Industry Promotion Agency, [...]
Sony Interactive Entertainment Shanghai held a press conference on November 22 where it announced the third phase of its China Hero Project. The China Hero Project is an initiative from Sony launched in 2016 to provide funding and resources to Chinese developers for them to bring games to the PlayStation platform for China and global markets. [...]
Blizzard Entertainment and NetEase confirmed on November 17 that the publishing license covering several Blizzard developed titles in mainland China will not be renewed when it expires on January 23, 2023. This will cause the shutdown of World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Hearthstone, Diablo III, Warcraft III, Heroes of the Storm and StarCraft titles in mainland China [...]
Insights from gamescom asia 2022 gamescom asia, one of the largest video games conferences in Asia, took place in Singapore on October 19-23, 2022 in person and online. The hybrid approach highlighted the Entertainment Zone to showcase new games from renowned studios in Asia streamed online for the public while the Trade Zone commenced in-person on [...]
Lucy Chow's new book Changing the Game: Discover How Esports and Gaming Are Redefining Business, Careers, Education, and the Future drops on September 27. The book features 34 essays from thought leaders in the gaming industry - including Niko. Niko Partners' Lisa Hanson is the author of the chapter Asia: The Heart of Global Esports and [...]
