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[Column] General: Nexon, Tencent, Most-Played PC Games
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Unless you've been hiding from the world, it should be clear that for the past few years now, the major Asian game publishers have outstripped their western counterparts in terms of increasing annual revenue. The recent weeks have brought interesting information on two of them, Nexon and Tencent. In addition, some new market data came out last month about the most-played PC games in North America and Europe.
Read more of Richard Aihoshi's The Free Zone: Nexon, Tencent, Most-Played PC Games.
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The new business model. Buy most of the shares in a company that's already released, convert it if it's got no sub into a currency conversion machine tied directly to real currency, tie that directly to real money requirements to play and voila.
Oh and don't forget to place well placed employees who spend all day and night watching the main forums of these games to act like everyone posting concerns over the creeping in of the eastern billing model into the west are conspiracy theorists so that the apologists will continue to spend spend spend. That's what happend with most of those on that list.
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Crazkanuk
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Asian games don't do that well in the west, at least so far. They are designed for game play that the asian market wants.
You have to realize that eastern markets are at least 5 times or more greater in size than the west too.
As to overwolf, not used by the majority of gamers and probably less so by MMO players, so any statistics from them is useless beyond getting a general trend.
Chinese publishers are providing games for a relatively homogenous cultural and linguistic group, which just happens to be 4 times larger than the USA and 3 times larger than all of europe. If a Chinese publisher was NOT the biggest by revenue, it would be a very sad reflection on their abilities.
Western publishers cannot operate freely in the Chinese market, so it's unlikely that they could become world leaders, even if they could overcome the cultural differences. The same is not true of Chinese companies when it comes to operating restrictions, so they have a built-in advantage.
"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." - Henry Ford
Yep. Not forgetting that China has a hell of a lot more people. I read somewhere that Xbox and PS4 are being released by the same company, which is odd.
I would like to see some numbers as to profitability per capita of target audience.
Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
That isn't entirely true, The Final fantasy games are very popular here and they aren't the only ones. And Archeage have at least done some impact lately as well.
Chinese games though seems to underperform pretty badly here, maybe we just don't like the same game or maybe Japanese players are closer to us then Chinese.
That the Eastern market is larger is no surprise, there is far more people in Asia then in North American and Europe. PC were far more common here once but not anymore.
What? Are we ignoring the:
*ESTIMATED*
Or that only 6 of the "top played games" can actually prove their numbers with tracking/stats unlike LoL/Blizzard's:
4433534905834590348590345834905348540958 people play, proof? Hah, good luck with that!
statistics...?
Holy mother of whorebiscuit. Moonlight Blade looks great. I wonder why there is so little press on that one.