NetEase Challenges Tencent’s Stronghold On Mobile Publishing

According to App Annie, NetEase has now replaced Tencent as the top mobile publisher by revenue worldwide as the company’s apps continue to grow in China. “The big reason here for NetEase’s surge is that it has the top two most lucrative games worldwide with the card-battling Onmyoji game and massively multiplayer online adventure Fantasy Westward Journey.”

China’s High-Earning Consumers to Surge by 2030

According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, a think tank, the number of people earning more than 10,000 USD per year in China is expected to grow to around 480 million by 2030 (from around 132 million today). At this point, the proportion of the population with upper-middle and high incomes will expand from 10 percent to 35 percent. This means there will be more dollars around to spend on gaming, to say the least.

Perfect World’s Pan-Entertainment Ecosystem

“Pan-Entertainment” is a relatively new term but it is notable – Tencent has been emphasizing this since at least 2013 and it’s the concept of interwoven stories between several different media, like music, film and TV, literature, animation, publishing and more. It’s the concept of “synergy” but instead of being amongst different companies, it’s the synergy of combined IP/stories across media.

Perfect World is now picking up pace too, according to Inside Games Asia – “How to promote cultural prosperity and development in cyberspace is something that insiders in the cultural and creative industry should think over,” said Xiao. According to Xiao, in next few years, the gaming industry may be completely subverted due to the rapid development of virtual technology. “Whether it is virtual reality or other new hardware and software, the value of technology improvements is to fundamentally change people’s entertaining and lifestyles,” said Xiao.

Upcoming VR Intelligence (VRX) 2016

If you are interested in the VR-Intelligence conference in San Francisco December 7-8, please use this code: 4715NIKO to get the 10% saving on either Basic or Business Passes listed here.

Unity Partners with Xiaomi

In an effort to assist developers enter China, Unity has partnered with Xiaomi to help support games on Xiaomi’s Android devices. Unity runs the Unity game engine which offers personal licenses for free, meaning China can potentially be more available as a market to the smaller and indie developers globally. However, even with these advancements, China’s regulations continue to be challenging to game developers of all sizes.

Happy Thanksgiving!

For our readers who are also based the United States like we are, we wish you and yours a very Happy Thanksgiving. We are thankful for all of the readers of the Niko News, and all of our clients. We are also grateful for the continuing growth and exciting nature of the digital games markets in Asia!

Niko Partners on Twitter

Follow us on Twitter @nikochina to see these comments in real time as we publish them! @ZhugeEx is Niko analyst Daniel Ahmad – his opinions are his own and he has a very informative blog and Twitter feed. Here are a few of our tweets from last week:

  • NetEase Eyes Mobile Games Growth After Mixed Third-Quarter Results http://insidegamesasia.biz/netease-eyes-mobile-games-growth-after-mixed-third-quarter-results/ … via @iga_biz
  • One Company’s Obsessive Quest to Crack China’s $8 Billion Mobile Games Industry https://nikopartners.com/china-mobile-games-dots-alibaba-vr/ …
  • Sina Weibo Expands Character Limit for All Users from 140 to 2,000 http://www.marbridgeconsulting.com/marbridgedaily/2016-11-14/article/96382/sina_weibo_expands_character_limit_for_all_users_from_140_to_2000 …
  • Alibaba sold $1 billion of products in the first FIVE minutes of Singles Day 2016! Mind bending.
  • It is a good day to consider going overseas! Read this article on Niko’s SEA games mkt analysis from our new report.