Chinese Gaming Market Growth Exploded in 2006
By Ron on Sunday, May 6th, 2007 at 9:50 AM PST In Games Industry
Last year, the video game market in China jumped 68% overall, and the online gaming sector jumped an astounding 74%, according to market intelligence firm Niko Partners.
Experts point to the enormous growth of the internet cafe culture among Chinese gamers as the main source of growth. The popularity of newly introduced, free-to-play MMO titles has caused the demand for games to skyrocket. According to Niko’s managing partner Lisa Cosmas Hanson, “If a game company can get an impressive game or console to market in China, the gamers there will embrace it. That said, getting a product into the market is not easy. The complex regulatory environment in China is still the greatest barrier to entry for foreign game companies.”
China’s gaming populations swelled to 37.5 million in 2006, a jump of 3.4 million gamers. Amazingly, 90 percent of those gamers play online games. Niko projects this number will increase to 71.9 million gamers by 2011. And no, they’re not all gold farmers.
They are all farmer on guild wars. I stopped playing the game cause of them
because they love to use cheap tactics to get gold. All they care is about gold. They don’t give a crap about the other players or not cheating.
I plan to re-enter GW, hoping other games took those farmers.