China Developing New Regulations for Mobile Games

17173.com reported that China’s Ministry of Culture is developing a new regulatory policy to help regulate mobile games. The policy is expected to be published in the second half of 2015 and will mainly focus on virtual in-game items and services.

The MOBA Genre

A writer tells readers of GamesIndustry.bz his views on why MOBA is not really a genre, but rather League of Legends is a great game that defines the “genre.” He talks about how other competitors have not succeeded with this genre (even DOTA2, he contends), and that they probably will not because League of Legends is a great game that is difficult to surpass. Then another article talks about how DOTA2 breaks eSports prize records with an $11.5 million crowd-funded pot, and there are still two months of fundraising left to go. Could MOBA games be simply a great spectator sport rather than a genre with multiple hit games within, and perhaps be the Launchpad for the evolution of eSports and professional gaming worldwide? Chinese and other Asian gamers are fascinated by MOBA, LOL DOTA2 and eSports. No matter if there other worthy competitors to LOL, the idea of eSports is great for the PC online games segment and DOTA2 and LOL are part and parcel to its success at the moment.

Global Games Market Size

It seems that PricewaterhouseCoopers figures include gaming hardware, but even if they do, their $93 billion forecast for global gaming revenue by 2019 mapped against Niko’s forecast for China’s gaming revenue by 2019 shows that China will own more than 25% of the global market, and the revenue in China only accounts for games and games services, not even the console or handheld hardware that comprises so much of PWC’s numbers. Southeast Asia is growing in importance and in revenue, and China will remain important. We encourage all readers to take a look at the Asian markets for your own companies if you have not already.