As the quality of China’s smartphones keeps on rising, so are the possibilities and developments within China’s mobile gaming market. China’s average mobile user owns a relatively cheap but high-performance mobile phone, which enables them to play mobile games.
What makes the market so interesting for companies? China’s mobile gamers are young, mainly living in the first and second-tier cities of China, and half of them are female. Most importantly, they generally are fervent users of QQ, WeChat, and other social media, and like to spend money online as digital consumers who do not mind paying for movies, music, or games.
According to a report at Whatsonwibo, the five main characteristics and must known facts of the China’s Mobile Game Markets are:
1. Highly Competitive Market
China’s mobile games market is a highly competitive one. Right now, it is dominated by big players Netease and Tencent. Besides these giants, there are also many other big players – such as independent mobile game company iDreamsky. This makes it challenging for smaller companies to enter the market. It is especially difficult for non-Chinese companies to enter China’s mobile gaming market, but there are also many opportunities for marketers and gaming companies that make it worthwhile. China has the world’s largest gaming market that is still continuing to grow; an exciting and booming place to be for companies that are not afraid of a challenge.
2. Restrictions & Censorship
Even without the big players, the Chinese gaming market is somewhat hard to enter for non-Chinese companies due to local restrictions and censorship. There is no Google Play Store, for example, as all Google products including Gmail, Google search, and the app store have been blocked since 2010.
This is just one of the many local restrictions foreign companies would have to deal with. But one major possibility for foreign companies to tap into the market is to establish an own company in China or to work with a local partner that has a thorough understanding of the market and its restrictions and possibilities.
3. Fan Economy
Many of China’s popular online game are based on popular Chinese literature, comics, anime or reality TV shows – this ‘crossover success’ is an important part of China’s mobile gaming market.
Star Wars is a good example of how ’fan economy’ can benefit multiple markets, including the gaming one; the Star Wars: Commander game became a number one hit in China earlier this year, generating more than one million downloads in just four days within its release. Foreign companies to use mobile big data to help them understand Chinese consumers and their preferences.
4. Going Global
The competitive domestic gaming market has led to an increasing internationalization of China’s gaming companies. One of these companies is Snail Games, that was established in Suzhou, China, in 2000, and set up its LA-based USA company in 2010. Going global poses a challenge for these companies, as they have to adjust their design to a more western taste, which often means making it less ‘cute’ or adding some game elements and promotion methods that speaks to a western audience. For the USA launch of the game Taichi Panda, for example, Snail Games hired famous American martial artist, judoka and actress Ronda Rousey to be their spokesman to make the game more ‘American’. There are also companies, including Tencent and Alibaba, that are all about buying. They enter the western market and buy up local companies like Miniclip or Pocket Gems.
The internationalisation of China’s mobile gaming market also forms an opportunity for foreign gaming companies; if they do not have a strategy to enter China themselves, it is also commercially interesting to help Chinese games to do localisation in countries outside of China.
5. Mobile eSports Games
Mobile eSports is bigger in China than it is in the West. Many bestseller games have proven that eSports can make much money on console – but it is even more interesting when people can play it on their phone whenever they want to play it. Adding a competitive feature, like is done in Hero Pro League, makes it even more appealing to players. One of the people who have made this market bigger is eSports lunatic Wang Sicong, who also happens to be the son of the richest man in China. eSports is important within China’s mobile gaming, but that it is not necessarily the dominant genre.
Source: Whatsonweibo.com
