Posts Tagged ‘NetEase’

ChinaJoy2011: Viewpoints of First Day Summit Forum

Lei Ding (William Ding), CEO of NetEase

The main reason for China’s original games’ success over the past decade: Chinese traditional culture and other local elements have made the games very popular and could compete with foreign games.

Qunzhao Tan, CEO of Shanda Games

Two major trends of the game industry: web games and online social games will continue their popularity; smart phone games will become very popular. Web platform and mobile platform will attract more game players, which is very important for all game companies. The transformation of platforms is unstoppable and platforms will coexist with each other and be more prosperous.

Yufeng Chi, CEO of Perfect World

Chi has shown his concerns about the crisis of copyright among Chinese online games. He said that Saint Seiya 2 had already gone online before their Saint Seiya Online, which is obviously a violation of copyright. He also said that foreign companies felt confused when they were about to operate Dragon Buster in overseas market because there were so many different versions. Chi has called for everyone’s duty of protecting Chinese games’ global reputation.

Yuxin Ren, CEO of Tencent Games.

Ren said there were 3 typical ways of operation in China: the first one is to acquire titles from others; the second is co-operative operation and the last is platform-operation, which is also called a flexible option of online game operation. Ren pointed out that Tencent is working on a platform by combing all its relevant games and softwares, including its chat tool, SNS community. In the sum up, Ren said the future of online games will be more open, and Tencent’s open policy would not be restricted to PC platform.

Wei Liu, CEO of Giant

Online game market experienced an annual growth rate of 70% from 2006 to 2008; while in the past two years, it was 30%. Slowing down is a good thing in the long run, he said. High growing speed will result in more poor quality games, which is not good for players and the game industry.

Dewen Chen, CEO of Changyou

Three viewpoints for the future of online game industry:

1. Cloud computing technology will be very important. As long as you have a cloud-supported browser, you can play games as you like.

2. The mainly challenge for China game industry in the future is marketing. It is becoming very difficult to promote games and the key is to produce comprehensive and diversified games.

3. China will become the largest online game market. China’s game companies’ mergers and acquisitions of foreign game companies are more likely to happen.

NetEase Boasts 400 Million Email Users, Marching into the Lottery and Game Business

Nasdaq-listed Chinese Web portal Netease announced on Monday that its 163.com email service has a total of 400 million user accounts.

The company said the integration of a news feed service to its mailbox had generated a great deal of advertising revenue, while it has also added a lottery and game system. NetEase has finally combined its game and mailbox services on its mailbox platform.

This is Netease’s new profit model after its news portal and advertising revenue model. It also has paid email service and enterprise email service. Netease said its email service had earned some money but it did not disclose figures.

Zirui Mo, Netease’s vice-general manager of email business, said the email service is a core strategic platform that has not faced any pressure in terms of profit, because the platform is not aiming to make money but to carry Netease’s other services. The email service is more of a platform than a mailbox.

Ding: The openness of many companies is just a stunt

“Openness is very common in the IT world,” said Netease’s CEO William Ding, in a recent interview,”The best example is IBM’s computers, which are the most open hardware platform in the world.”

“When coming into the age of operating systems, Microsoft’s Windows prove to be another open platform, which is good for many companies; Seven years ago, China’s Monternet was an open platform; Amazon and Android phones are also open platforms.”

“The openness should be under good control or it can be a disaster,” Ding said, “It is difficult to judge an open platform is good or bad. Some companies can also do very well with a closed platform, like Apple; while some open platforms still fail to defeat one good game, like Microsoft and SONY to Blizzard.”

“Openness or closeness is not the most important. You have to meet uses’ needs and keep them as core players. Netease is very cautious when making decisions relating to players’ interests. We always put them in first place.”

The Rollout of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is a Complete Farce

Yesterday NetEase formally launched World of Warcraft: Cataclysm in China. The installation kits are 6 G, but after normal upgrading, the game turns out to be 32.9 G!!! NetEase has to cooperate with Dangdang.com to sell the on-game’s CD, which is a very rare thing. We noticed it cost more than two days for players to download the game, and another day to complete the upgrading process, which is really a challenge to players.

CTM opened at 6 p.m. yesterday and the farce began. Players could not install the game properly, not to mention to enter the game. It was been named “World of Warcraft: Update and install ” yesterday . Though Netease and Blizzard finally fixed the problem, they really could have done better.

I believe it is the large client program and long waiting time that affected the promotion of online games. Some game companies succeed just by offering smaller on-line games in China, most of which are only several hundred Ms. Blizzard admitted loss of players yesterday, which proves the more complex the games are, the easier players will leave.

Blizzard to Incorporate StarCraft 2’s Battle.NET Together

Earlier this morning, NetEase Game portal revealed that Blizzard is going to incorporate StarCraft 2’s Battle.NET together: South Korea/ Taiwan Battle.NET merger will happening soon, and also Russia / Europe, North America / Latin America, while the mainland’s Battle.NET will not be affected. Blizzard says the reason is to achieve the “cross-region combat” effect and reduce waiting time.The merger shows that Blizzard takes full control of the Battle.Net.At the same time, the incident shows StarCraft 2 has some problems – the game play is very similar to StarCraft but the subscription is not free (It is the only e-sports game charging subscription fee in China). NetEase has cut the price of StarCraft prepaid card (February) by 50% this month.

NetEase launched iTownSDK game development competition: total prize money reached 1 million Yuan

The GameLook attend the release conference .iTown is a 3D causal social online game and also an opening platform. The NetEase will provide SDK to developer’s .The SDK is a tool that can be used in developing 2D and 3D causal social game (which like POP Cap’s games). The SDK is a very good engine .The NetEase has already used this tool for six years.The iTown will provide a lot of causal social online game in future. The developers will get 80% income of their game .iTown will be released in 2012.

NetEase announced the price of StarCraft II monthly card will cut 50% in July

Since the StarcraftII was released in China, the performance of StarcraftII is just so-so. From search data of BaiDu, we can see that LOL is doing better than StarCraftII and the popularity of LOL is continue increasing .The LOL is ranking 15th in net bar now, but SrarcraftII has not yet entered TOP20.It is rare to see that the game of Blizzard launch a discounts and promotions activity. It is suggest that the free to play game is more popular than paid game in China. I think it is a result of the income below expectations.

World of Warcraft:Cataclysm to Launch in Mainland China on July 12, 2011

Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. and NetEase.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTES) today announced that World of Warcraft ® : Cataclysm™ , the third expansion for Blizzard Entertainment’s award-winning massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), will launch in mainland China on July 12, 2011. In preparation for the expansion’s release, players can now begin the process of background downloading data for version 4.1 of the game client, which will be required to play the expansion upon its release.

World of Warcraft – Cataclysm finally got the approval of General Administration of Press and Public of the People’s Republic of China

The World of Warcraft – Cataclysm finally got the approval of General Administration of Press and Public of the People’s Republic of China in June 17. World of Warcraft – Cataclysm cans legally operating in China right now.The World of Warcraft – Cataclysm is the World of Warcraft expansion set after World of Warcraft : Wrath of the Lich King .The countdown to the the World of Warcraft – Cataclysm has begun.

World of Warcraft – Cataclysm passed the approval of Ministry of Culture of the People’s Republic of China

Agency operators NetEase are estimated to spend 2 or 3 weeks to get the approval of General Administration of Press and Public of the People’s Republic of China, according to a person familiar with the matter said earlier this month.
Before this, World of Warcraft – Cataclysm have been released in other parts of the world. The version of World of Warcraft in China is always dropping behind the other area. This phenomenon results in many Mainland Chinese players flock in Europe and the United States Servers or Taiwan Servers. When Mainland updates the game, a lot of Chinese players will turn back to China servers.

NetEase Reports Q1 2011 Unaudited Financial Results

Total revenues for the first quarter of 2011 were RMB1.5 billion (US$234.9 million), compared to RMB1.7 billion and RMB1.2 billion for the preceding quarter and the first quarter of 2010, respectively.

Revenues from online games were RMB1.4 billion (US$211.6 million) for the first quarter of 2011, compared,to RMB1.4 billion and RMB1.1 billion for the preceding quarter and the first quarter of 2010, respectively.Revenues from advertising services were RMB126.8 million (US$19.4 million) for the first quarter of 2011, compared to RMB233.7 million and RMB91.5 million for the preceding quarter and the first quarter of 2010, respectively.