We are very fortunate to announce that Joost van Dreunen has joined Niko Partners as an advisor! Considered the top academic in the $160 billion video games industry, Joost van Dreunen teaches at the NYU Stern School of Business and is author of One Up: Creativity, Competition, and the Global Business of Video Games. Previously he [...]
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 [...]
Jury to Decide Owner of Dota According to Ars Tecnhica, “Defense of the Ancient's path from an ultra-popular Warcraft III mod to the core of Valve's ultra-popular MOBA, Dota 2, is a long and confusing saga. Now, two developers working on their own mobile versions of Dota are arguing in court that Valve didn't actually acquire [...]
