Archive for the ‘Mobile’ Category

UltiZen Games Aligns with GREE

Today UltiZen Games Limited Shanghai (Headquarters: China Shanghai; CEO: Lan Haiwen; “UltiZen”), China browser and smartphone game developer and publisher announced the alliance with GREE, Inc. (Headquarters: Minato-ku, Tokyo; Founder and Chief Executive Officer: Yoshikazu Tanaka; Listed in the First Section of Tokyo Stock Exchange; Code: 3632; “GREE”).
GREE aspires to offering the “No.1″ community service which is widely utilized by the people all over the world by providing good quality contents to more users through the social game platforms for smartphones.

Under such circumstances, with the purpose of strengthening GREE’s developing ability of good quality contents and social games, GREE has formed a business collaboration with UltiZen which has bases in Shanghai, Beijing, and Tokyo and deploys the game development service. And today, both companies have entered into an agreement to acquire some of the shares of capital stock of UltiZen for further business collaboration and strengthening the relationship with UltiZen.

“We are very excited to align with GREE, the world leading mobile social network service provider,” said Lan Haiwen, chief executive officer at UltiZen. “The alliance opens an over 100 million user-based mobile social network for UltiZen to develop creative and interesting smartphone contents for. After GREE being the shareholder of UltiZen, the partnership between GREE and UltiZen could be even more fruitful.”

Kylin Games COO Shanghu Xin starts his own business, the first Pad game to come in August

Kylin Games’ COO Shanghu Xin redigned in May and has set up his own mobile gaming company. Shanghu Xing joined Kylin Games in 2008 and was in charge of operating Genghis Khan OL. Xin plans to launch the new company’s first game in August.

Xin has chosen Pad and iPhone platforms, while many other developers focus on Android. Xin’s games will first be released with English version to enter the global market, and then he will launch Chinese version.

Xin believes that Pads will be more popular than PCs and the Pad games market will be very prosperous. Xin’s company has about 20 employees. Several of them followed him from Guangzhou (Kylin Games) to Beijing and the rest were recruited.

Rovio plows into China market with Angry Birds localizations

Rovio today formally announces the company is going to land China market with local branch companies and localizations of Angry Birds. Judging from Peter Vesterbacka’s ambition previously, we can infer that sooner or later Rovio will formally bring Angry Bird to China.

Considering about the localization of the game, Rovio plans for a moon festival edtion for Chinese fans for the upcoming Mid-Autumn Festal in September. And the special edtion will also be offered to worldwide fans. In order to extend the market, Rovio exclusively makes moon cakes and sneakers with Angry Bird’s logo. Rovio claims China has become the 2nd large market for the company already

The9 gets the sole licensing of Exit Games’ Photon engine in China

NASDAQ-LISTED The9 Ltd. announced today that it will get the sole licensing of Exit Games’ Photon game engine in China.

Guoding Shen, The9’s vice president said that by using Exit Games’ leading network engine and socket server ‘Photon’, few services are needed to support a large game. The9 hopes domestic developers can build and distribute rich cross-platform games quickly, easily and without compromise. The9 is expecting a win-win situation with developers.

Photon engine now supports various platforms – such as Unity, iOS, Android, Flash, Silverlight, and HTML5; with Phonton’s help, developers can easily achieve the goal of multiuser real-time playing on browsers, PCs, Macs and mobile devices including iPad, iPhone and Android phones. Games companies like OpenFeint,Bigpoint,Walt Disney,KONAMI are all using products of Exit Games.

Analysys International: AppStore China has over 370,000 applications

Analysys International announced yesterday the store monitoring applications in June showed the number of domestic stores to maintain the overall rapid development of applications, including Apple AppStore China, the number of domestic applications reached 370,000, more than all the other mainstream stores the total number of applications.

Data show that in June Apple AppStore than China, the number of applications increased by 7.7% in May, while Google AndroidMarket in China over the same period the number of applications increased from 140,000 to 150,000, with the growth rate of 7.1%. The performance of the domestic application stores was different; Tianyi Space had significantly increased its number of applications to 22,000, the growth rate of 20.7%; Applications of China Mobile’s MM store and China Unicom’s Wostore had decreased to some extent. Terminal application stores like Samsung Mobile, Nokia Ovi and Lenovo Music Phone Store remained a double-digit growth on the whole.

The9 to operate two mobile games of Eitaro Soft

China’s leading online game developer and operator The9 (NASDAQ:NCTY) announced that they would operate Eitaro Soft’s Galaxy Frontier and Last Precious in mainland on July 29.

Galaxy Frontier, which has become the first Japanese mobile 3D Action MMORPG, currently ranks the first on Japan’s i-Mode downloading list. It will be the first mobile 3D Action MMORPG in China; Last Precious is another popular title of Eitaro Soft: the game’s iOS version has an avatar system which allows users to decorate their characters, which is very popular among female users.

Up until now, The9’s Wireless Internet Department has signed agreements with over 100 game developers around the world. They have released more than 500 high-quality mobile games and have more than 30 distribution channels in China.

Tencent acquires Blade and Sword OL 2 from Pixel Soft, to be tested in August

News from China Joy shows Tencent has acquired Pixel Soft’s 3D Fighting Game Blade and Sword OL 2. The game’s 1st closed beta goes in the end of August. Tencent’s vice president Xiaotie Ma plans to bring Blade and Sword OL 2 to the TGA and relevant competitions are being prepared.

Blade & Sword 2 was developed under 3D engine, and is a MMOARPG which reserves the unique feature of the series of Blade & Sword, so the game focuses more on the action part in battles. The Blade and Sword series is always paid attention by players, especially its fluent and invigoration battle system.

Tencent then exclusively sets a demo experience zone in its booth for the game. This is the 2nd co-operation for Tencent and Pixel Soft, their 1st co-operation has made the Journey to Fairyland’s success in China market, 2005.

Shanda Games to release mobile games in Q3

Qunzhao Tan, Shanda Games’s CEO revealed yesterday that they would release a mobile game in Q3, and more new mobile games would come out every other two or three months.

When talking about the charging system of mobile games, Tan said advertising and props charge would continue as a main trend.

He also said that Shanda Games are not in a competing but a cooperating position with other open platforms; while Shanda still value the strategy of developing both platforms and games, which is to meet requirements of the games industry.

Tan also revealed that Shanda had spent nearly $200 million in mergers and acquisitions last year; while this year their budget is $500 million. Their target companies are of two kinds: good game companies and game platforms, which can help promote their games to overseas markets.

Renren to launch open mobile platform, doubling its R&D investment

Renren.com’s CEO Jiang Liu revealed yesterday that they were going to launch an open mobile platform very soon.

“Renren’s smart phone users were up fourfold from this January to May.” said Liu. Renren is about to double its R&D investment on mobile Internet.

According to Liu, MMOGs are very hard to operate on mobile platforms. Social games are more likely to be presented on browsers. “The best distribution channel of games is through the client, and the browser is the most widely used client.”Liu said.

ChinaJoy 2011: Mobile Online Game Market Attract More Attention

The annual game players’ festival — the Ninth ChinaJoy, will be held in Shanghai, July 28-31. The9 has ordered a booth in the W2 Pavilion, which is for “Mobile Internet entertainment”; China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom also have booths in this pavilion. It is clearly that The9 will pay more attention on wireless games and the mobile online game market will grow faster than our expectations.

The9’s wireless business was started in 2010. In early 2010, CEO Jun Zhu said that The9 would enter the mobile Internet market. This July, The9 made an undisclosed minority equity investment in Aurora Feint, the company behind OpenFeint, a social gaming network for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

CNNIC’s report shows that China’s mobile Internet game players numbered 17 million by June 2009, reaching 14.7% of all mobile Internet users. Statistics from Enfodesk, the Seasonal Survey of Chinese Mobile Internet Business in Q1, 2011, recently released by Analysys International, shows that Chinese mobile games revenue had reached 255 million RMB in Q1, 2011, with a sequential growth rate of 18.41%. More and more game companies are entering the market, hoping to start a new round a growth.

Kylin Game to release mobile MMORPG Genghis Khan

Kylin Game has set up its mobile gaming company 70wx.com in early 2010 and Hao Liang as its CEO. The company is going to release a mobile real time MMORPG, Genghis Khan, which supports Android.

Kylin Game’s CEO Jin Shang has said that Genghis Khan would be their first mobile game and The Water Margin (mobile version) would come after. Kylin Game plans to launch three client online games this year, respectively Shu Jian En Chou Lu, Xue Shan Fei Hu and The Water Margin.

Many companies have claimed to release mobile version of their online games this year. Shanda Games has announced a 3A strategy; Giant has launched an iOS version of its Golden Land. It is a trend that large client games are having their mobile brothers.

China Mobile collects Android games globally, 100,000 RMB for each

China Mobile has recently launched its Developer Bonus Program, which is designed to reward developers who have created excellent Android games for the China Mobile gaming platform. Each developer can submit 5 games and 3 of them will be shortlisted at most. The bonus is 100,000 RMB for each shortlisted game. China Mobile will take 30% of the profits if the game income is over 100,000 RMB.

China Mobile has declared that all Android games had not been released on any platform will be eligible for this bonus program; Games without Chinese version will also qualify for this program if the operation language is changed into Chinese.

CNNIC: China Mobile Internet Development Statistics Report (2011 Mid-year)

China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) released its 28th Statistical Report on the internet development yesterday. China’s mobile internet users numbered 318 million, adding 84.3 million since the end of 2009. Some other findings are as follows:

1. The mobile IM represents the highest rates of mobile internet usage with 71.8%; the second is mobile news 62.6%. Large mobile IM user base and high mobile IM pre-installed rate contributed to this result.

2. Mobile micro-blogging represents 34.0% mobile internet usage, adding 18.5% since late 2010. The rapid expansion of mobile micro-blogging has two reasons: micro-blogging has developed very fast in 2011 and the user base is very large; micro-blogging is a very good mobile online application.

3. The mobile flow fee is still very high, which has prevented mobile Internet users from enjoying mobile music, mobile video, mobile games etc. Though the 3G service developed fast in 2011, the user base is still very small.

4. With the popularity of smart phones, mobile phone software installation has improved to 46.8%. Client based application service will surpass the web based application service very soon.

iResearch: 2011Q2 China Mobile Games Market Size Arrived 980 Million Yuan

According to the statistics from the 2010-2011 China Mobile Internet Research Report released by iResearch recently, China Mobile Internet market reached 7.79 billion Yuan in 2011Q2, with a sequential growth rate of 20.9% and a year-on-year increase being 93.8%.
The 2011Q2 China Mobile Games market size arrived 980 million Yuan, with a sequential growth of 11.3% and a year-on-year increase being 66.1%. The rapid expansion of smart phone games business had contributed to this steady growth.

China Unicom lauched Wophone with its own operation system

China Unicom has launched their first two “Wophone” handsets with the company’s “Wophone” operation system in Shanghai yesterday.

The “Wophone” operation system is a linux-based open platform. Yingtao Yu, China Unicom’s general sales manager said the operation system was developed completely by the company and it is good for their information security.

Yu said that developing their own operation system has cost China Unicom lots of money. Google and Microsoft must agree with them.

The first two “Wophone” suppliers are Envada and Tianyu. China Unicom has announced cooperation with ZTE, Huawei, Tianyu and TCL for the next four “Wophone” handsets, and the “Wophone” apps platform will be online soon.

The new offering, which, no doubt, brings some really tough challenges for the oPhone brand of the rival China Mobile, is believed to be coming with greater self-sufficiency and hence may eventually make a far-reaching impact on the global smartphone market. Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba all have their own operation system and it is difficult to judge them from the perspective of market acceptance.