China

• Honor of Kings: One Game banks USD$1bn in One Month

  2 weeks ago News

  

  The mobile game Honor of Kings has generated USD$1bn (£757.5m) through the month of February. By now, stories of free-to-play mobile games making extravagant amounts of money are relatively familiar, but the ramping success of TenCent’s ‘multiplayer online battle arena’ game (more commonly a ‘MOBA’) is particularly fascinating. The Chinese-made Honor of Kings is also known as Arena of Valor in various international markets. The figures come from Japanese investment outfit Nomura, as reported by cifnews (via PocketGamer.biz). Honor of Kings has long been [...]

• Intel & Tencent Partner for New Game Streaming Service

  3 weeks ago News

  

  Computing hardware specialist Intel and Chinese tech giant Tencent are expected to announce a co-developed game streaming service at this month’s Game Developers Conference. The likely announcement emerged after a series of tweets from Daniel Ahmad of market research and consulting business Niko Partners. Convincing images shared by Ahmad appear to show a service capable of streaming 1080p games at 60FPS with a delay of <40ms. If gaming display and streaming specifications aren’t your thing, you can be assured they promise a [...]

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• Chinese Gaming Giants’ Overseas Revenues Skyrocket, Chinese Government Reinstates Game Approvals Freeze

  4 weeks ago News

  

  Two current game business stories together highlight the stark dichotomy at the heart of China’s games market. As revealed in a new report from business insight specialist IHS Markit, Chinese tech giants Tencent and NetEase saw extraordinary profit growth for their international mobile game releases through 2018. Simply put, combined mobile game net revenue gained in territories outside of China by Tencent and NetEase increased 500% in 2018 to USD$472m (£360m). Again, that figure relates to sales of games outside Tencent and [...]

• Facebook Sees More Q4 Mobile App Downloads than Any Other Publisher Globally

  1 month ago News

  

  Social Networking giant Facebook saw its mobile app downloaded more times than those of any other publisher globally in the closing months of 2018, according to a new report. The Facebook app was downloaded 800 million times through October to December last year, putting it a significant way ahead of the next best performing publisher, Google, which counted over 650 million downloads through the period. The numbers come from insights by enterprise-level data outfit Sensor Tower, which looked at downloads across both [...]

• Government Freeze on China's Games Market Continues to Thaw – But Is It Enough?

  2 months ago News

  

  More games are to be released in China. Under normal circumstances, that statement would be far from newsworthy. But for nine months in 2018, the world’s largest games market had been significantly stifled by new Government regulation. In March last year, following a restructuring of the state institutions, China’s Government declined to approve a single new video game for release. Many titles were simply stopped in their tracks, while numerous others hand their monetisation potential stifled. Updates and new content, after [...]

• App Store Customers Spend £1.7bn Over Festive Week; Apple Issues Profit Warning

  3 months ago News

  

  Apple customers across the world collectively spent USD$1.22bn (£1.7bn) in the week that ran from Christmas Day 2018 to New Years Day 2019: the company’s user spending record for the period. The festive week is famously a time for peaks in app spending; and clearly 2018/19 has been no different. On New Years Day alone, App Store users spent USD$322m (£254m), marking a new all-time single-day spending record for Apple’s customers. “The App Store had a record-breaking holiday week and New Year’s [...]

• China's Government Ends 9-Month Freeze on New Game Approvals

  3 months ago News

  

  China may be the world’s biggest game market, with regard to user numbers and revenues, but for many months the nation’s Government had declined to approve a single new game. That all changed in recent days. As reported by the South China Morning Post, a new body, the State Administration of Radio and Television (SART), was formed in March 2018, with a view to monitoring media content intended for public consumption. From 28 March 2018, no new game titles were approved [...]

• Fortnite Perfects In-Game Purchases as Yearly Revenue Hits USD$3bn

  10 months ago News

  

  Fortnite is the break-out gaming success of the year. It has currently got 45 million users playing the game (across platforms) and has a run rate of around USD$3bn (£2.3bn) per year. The game has barely touched the sides in terms of growth; and with its Android launch next month, a huge spike in user growth is expected. The freemium gaming model perfected Fortnite’s success has been built on a freemium model. Its ‘Battle Royale’ version is free-to-play across all platforms. Players [...]