Boom Game Market In China

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The game maker Perfect World told a Chinese newspaper recently that Chinese game operators are "irresistibly excited about digging gold in overseas markets."


China had 290 million Internet users nationwide as of November, with the number of Web surfers expanding at a 50% annual pace. At midyear, more than half that figure--some 147 million people--were playing online games, a nearly 20% increase from six months earlier, according to government figures. That's about 4 million new game players a month.
"We expect that in the next few years, the growth of the online gaming market in China will maintain its current speed," says Jasmine Liang, spokeswoman for Netease, which produces the highly popular "Fantastic Westward Journey." "When the economy is gloomy, you might feel it's expensive to spend 100 or 200 yuan [about $7 to $14] on a dinner or a movie, but dozens of [yuan] for one month on gaming is not that big a deal."
Online gaming is cheap indeed--less than 10 cents an hour, or free for some games that make money by selling bonus features such as weapons to top-end players. Since it's also a form of social networking, it provides an inexpensive social alternative to dinner and drinks with friends. For workers with downtime at state-owned enterprises, it is a popular time-killer, a social-networking version of solitaire. For a growing pool of computer-savvy college graduates facing a tough job market, it is a diverting way to stay in touch with former classmates. Shanda Interactive boasts the largest overall market share in China, according to iResearch, with 15.7% of revenue; 2nd-ranked Netease.Besides the increase in users and the increase in games, the Chinese market has room to grow, in part, because their product is still catching up to the global standard-bearer, "World of Warcraft."The game maker Perfect World told a Chinese newspaper recently that Chinese game operators are "irresistibly excited about digging gold in overseas markets."And after conducting research, the company decided only one market outside of China will be particularly lucrative: The United States.

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