On Monday evening SIG analyst Zhao Chunming downgraded Tencent from positive to neutral over concerns about its valuation in the face of a slowdown in the Chinese online game market. 48% of Tencent’s revenue comes from online gaming, and in the last several weeks Perfect World, Shanda Games, Giant Interactive and Netease have all issued [...]
Zynga is doing more than just opening a Beijing office, they have bought XPD Media-Zynga Enters Asia With Acquisition Of Gaming Startup XPD Media; Opens Office In Beijing. Congrats to Robin Chan, Andy Tian and the XPD team. Now I know why they are leasing so much space. All I can say Robin is if [...]
UPDATE2: Zynga Acquires XPD Media; Opens Office In Beijing. Today Zynga posted three jobs on Craigslist Beijing: [UPDATE:These job listings appear to have been deleted from Craigslist. The links go to copies of the original postings. Strange that Zynga would post and then delete these, unless they jumped the gun on a more substantive announcement/partnership [...]
By now we are all familiar with the concept of the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) as four nations whose “combined economies could eclipse the combined economies of the current richest countries of the world” by 2050. Today China’s largest Internet firm Tencent announced a $300m investment into Russia’s Digital Sky Technologies Limited (DST). DST is the [...]
The China Social Game Summit 2010 was packed, and Rockyou, a sponsor, was one of the stars of the conference. Jia Shen (沈佳), co-founder and CTO of Rockyou, gave an excellent presentation in Chinese to a standing room only crowd of Chinese developers. He not only introduced his company but also gave a very informative talk [...]
Inside Social Games reports on a couple of rumors making the rounds recently: Social Rumors about Chinese Gaming Companies: Tencent Looked at CrowdStar, Shanda Going for RockYou?. I doubt either of these transactions will occur; Tencent is said to have backed away from Crowdstar when the price approached $200m, and Rockyou, which has raised $117M, is [...]
Niko Partners, run by a good friend, has released its latest survey of the China Game Market. Per the release: Niko Partners, the leading market intelligence firm on China’s video game industry, today announced preliminary results from its upcoming Annual Review & Five-Year Forecast on China’s video game industry, citing $3.57 billion in revenue from [...]
Shanda Games ($GAME) purchased Mochi Media, a flash game distribution and advertising platform, for a reported $80m. It is Shanda’s first move into the US market. Several of the other leading Chinese game firms are already operating in the US or have announced plans to enter the market. Perfect World ($PWRD) operates English versions of some [...]
Items of Interest