Chinese Overseas Investments Now Restricted China has tightened the reins on external investment to combat rising debt ratios for domestic companies. One of the “restricted” areas is “entertainment." We are not lawyers, but this seems to include digital gaming. We will work with our friends at Pillar Legal to sort out what it really means for [...]
China Unicom to Raise $11.7 Billion from Private Firms China Unicom is said to be raising $11.7 billion from investors including the likes of Tencent and Alibaba. China Unicom will be the first of the state-run telecom entities to receive private capital and mixed ownership. China Mobile is still the world's largest mobile phone operator in [...]
Philippines Government Announces Support for Esports The Philippines' Games and Amusement Board has officially begun to recognize esports and competitive computer/video gaming as a professional activity. The GAB has licensed several Filipino Dota 2 players to travel to the USA for the International - previously, they would sign on with Chinese teams. However, there may also [...]
Tencent’s PC Games Revenue is Larger than Reports Reflect According to Tencent’s Q1 2017 financial release dated 17 May 2017, total online games revenue in the first quarter was 22,800 million RMB ($3,360 million). That’s $3 billion in one quarter alone, just from online games! The financial report says that PC client-based games revenue was 14,100 [...]
ChinaJoy 2017 Niko Partners will be attending ChinaJoy 2017 next week and giving two presentations - one on the global state of video games and one on esports in China. If you would like to schedule a meeting with us, please contact Lisa via email or WeChat (id: lisacosmashanson) Read about it China Censors Whatsapp Users [...]
Apple Removes Nearly 60k Chinese Apps from the App Store Between June 10th and June 21st, Apple removed around 58,000 Chinese apps from the App Store. About a third of the games were gaming apps. It has been noted that Apple routinely removes apps every 2-3 months, however, this was a larger mass removal than previous [...]
Tencent's 5-Year Esports Plan Tencent has unveiled their 5-year esports plan for the Chinese market as of last week. The plan revolves around more esports leagues, tournaments, esports associations, and esports-themed industrial parks tentatively with stadiums and training facilities. Their expectation is that China will become the biggest esports market in the world. Niko views esports [...]
E3 2017 E3 felt different this year (in a good way) - more like it was years ago when it was an important destination for the games industry. It was exciting, absolutely crowded, and several of the booths were very impressive with a big focus on esports and some on VR. In the past few years [...]
Blizzard Selling Overwatch Credits in China In accordance with the new regulations in China that require online game operators to disclose probability rates for random-chance loot boxes, Blizzard (through their JV with NetEase) announced their probability data. However, they are now taking a step beyond this effort and no longer selling loot boxes. Instead, in a [...]
VNG Plans US IPO VNG Corp has signed a preliminary agreement with Nasdaq Inc to explore an IPO. VNG, founded in 2004, has long been a strong operator in Vietnam. Vietnam, along with Indonesia and Thailand, are three of the countries we recommend watching for the highest revenue and growth potential as of our 2016 Southeast [...]
