Here's what happened across Asia's video game industry this week 🧵

• Riot Games upgrades its Shanghai studio
• Tencent increases its stake in Ubisoft
• Korean gamers host a protest
• Reuters reports Sea is cutting jobs
• M1 Singapore launches cloud gaming platform

1/6 On the one year anniversary of Riot Games Shanghai, the studio will be upgraded to Riot China R&D Group.

Riot will establish local studios in China to support on the research and development of existing and new games, primarily focusing on mobile games.

mp.weixin.qq.com/s/WfRxSjn9MmsO…

Here's what happened across Asia's video game industry this week 🧵

• PS5 sees a price hike
• Monster Hunter Rise Sunbreak sells 4m
• Shanghai govt subsidizes video game projects
• Malaysia to get esports mall & hotel
• Steam registered internet cafes in Korea up YoY

1/6 Japan and China are impacted by Sony's price hike for the PS5, alongside Continental Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia, Mexico and Canada.

My comments are included in the article below on the reason why this took place now

washingtonpost.com/video-games/20…

Total War: Warhammer III is out on Steam today and is being received well by most players.

But when you look at Chinese language reviews, 72% of them are negative. This also extends to Warhammer II, which saw negative reviews in the last few days.

Let's explore why 🧵 Despite not having an official release in China, the Total War series is very popular in the country.

Total War: Three Kingdoms became the fastest selling game in the series thanks to sales in China.

Warhammer III was anticipated due to one of the factions being based on China.

Here is a 🧵on Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion.

A general summary of everything I've tweeted over the past day + extracts from the note to clients we published yesterday. - This is the largest acquisition in the games industry to date.

- Is one week after the previous largest gaming acquisition (Take Two > Zynga).

- An acquisition of this nature is a clear endorsement of the importance of the games industry globally.

https://twitter.com/ZhugeEX/status/1483432877048184834?s=20

India is the fastest growing video games market in Asia!

We just released a new report on India's Mobile and PC game market which includes 75 slides and 56 data exhibits.

Will do a thread below with key takeaways -

More info on the report here:
nikopartners.com/news/india-is-… India’s PC and Mobile game revenue in 2021 is projected to reach $534.1 million, up 31.79% YoY.

Note. Niko Partners does not include revenue from Real Money Gaming in its market model.

India’s PC and mobile gamers in 2021 is projected to reach 339.9 million, up 21.97% YoY

We just released new reports covering the video games market in 10 key markets across Asia

This report looks at the PC & Mobile games markets

When including mainland China, Asia accounts for 60% of global PC game and Mobile game revenue

Thread below:
venturebeat.com/2021/12/07/nik… The Asia-10 PC & Mobile game markets we cover will reach $41.8 billion in revenue by 2025. When including mainland China the total is $92.34 billion.

There will be nearly 1 billion PC and Mobile gamers in Asia-10 by 2025, and over 1.65 billion when including mainland China.

So uh, some players of Harry Potter: Magic Awakened (Released in China in Sep) discovered a 'bug' where female characters would make an ahegao face when attacked by magic spells...

NetEase, the dev, has apologised and said it was a bug related to tongues clipping through chins The initial issue rightfully attracted criticism after it went viral on social media, especially as this bug was not present with male characters.

Many players were unhappy that this existed in the first place. NetEase compensated players with free in game items and currency.

MiHoYo, the Genshin Impact dev, confirmed its opening of a new R&D studio in Montreal. This was announced earlier in the year

The studio will hire 100+ employees over 2 years + work on a new AAA open world action adventure game with shooter mechanics

MiHoYo has 3,500+ employees MiHoYo has expanded rapidly from 3 people in 2014 to 1,500 in 2020 and now 3,500 in 2021.

In addition to the Shanghai HQ, the studio has opened studios and offices in Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the US and now Canada.

It has hired numerous global talents in the past year.

I've spent the last month working with clients to help them understand the impact of recent regulations on China's video games industry. The most notable change being additional policies to curb gaming addiction among minors.

Here is a quick thread 🧵1/

nikopartners.com/additional-res… To understand what is happening in the country, it is important to know the history of gaming regulation there.

To keep it simple, China's games industry went through a period of reform and restructuring in 2018 and 2019 which included key changes.

Activision Blizzard Conference Call

Q -What has Activision been doing regarding the lawsuit, for employees and how will it impact productivity pipeline

A - Answer is a restatement of the below. Focused on diversity. Employees are the greatest asset etc.

https://twitter.com/ZhugeEX/status/1422651474652303370?s=20

COO states diversity is important to the company, they are hiring more diverse staff. Women and Men are paid equally. Happy to have new leadership at Blizzard to drive change.

(Not sure about the paid equally thing)

This is not because of any new regulation or recent change.

It’s because of state backed media raising concerns over ongoing video game addiction among minors in China and people speculating the games industry will see tightened regulations or drastic changes like other sectors

https://twitter.com/bloombergasia/status/1422385922373525504

China has already implemented strict anti addiction laws to curb gaming addiction among minors, which will continue to develop and play an integral part in the games industry there.

Not much else say at this point tbh.

Microsoft's Gaming division (Xbox) reported revenue of $15.37 billion in FY 21 (July 1, 2020 - June 30, 2021).

- Best year ever for Xbox
- Revenue up 32.8% YoY
- Primarily driven by $2.3bn increase in software / subscription revenue.
- Series X|S boosted hardware rev 92% YoY The sharp increase in the past fiscal year was in part due to the pandemic boost, which led to increased software spend and a boost in Game Pass subscriptions.

Hardware revenue almost doubled due to Series X|S launch.

FY21:
Content & Services: $12.17bn
Hardware: $3.53bn

I'm quoted in this @CNBC article about Chinese companies investing in overseas game studios.

I definitely think the framing of this article could be better, so I'm adding some clarifications to my comments below.

cnbc.com/2021/07/28/chi… 1. It's no secret that companies such as Tencent, ByteDance, NetEase etc... have been acquiring or investing in overseas companies for some time now

This is primarily because they see games as a key vertical and as one of the largest forms of entertainment that is still growing

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick sent out a letter to all employees today.

- Calls initial response tone deaf
- Says they will take swift action to ensure a safe environment
- Implementing 5 changes immediately around employees, personnel changes and hiring.

investor.activision.com/node/34326/pdf It should be noted that Activision Blizzard employees made demands earlier today.

As far as I can tell, only one of these was addressed in the letter (Hiring practices) and it remains to be seen how that will be addressed.

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

One of the things that Eric, the former 343i artist, says in the video is that gaming news sites ran the story without reaching out to him first. Even when he reached out to sites / channels to try and clarify, no one responded.

Unfortunately that's how it goes a lot of the time

https://twitter.com/JezCorden/status/1390992190944518145

Professional outlets reporting on a video in Mandarin via a poorly translated forum post is never a good idea. It should be obvious that reaching out would be the first thing to do.

There are plenty of sites that actually do reach out of course and only a minority that don't.

I was quoted in this @washingtonpost article about Xbox's gaming business.

Microsoft said at the Apple v Epic trial that it has never generated a profit from hardware. While this is true, the company does generate a profit from software and services.

washingtonpost.com/video-games/20… Console manufacturers have traditionally adopted the razor and blades model.

The initial R&D cost + need for affordable pricing to reach the mass market leads to a loss on hardware.

This investment is recouped through first party and third party software / services sales.

I was quoted in this @FortuneMagazine article about Nintendo's past year and its earnings report for FY2020/21.

It is behind a paywall, but I'll add some thoughts under this tweet.

fortune.com/2021/05/07/nin… FY20/21 was a record year for Nintendo. The stay-at-home period led to an increasing in gaming engagement and spend across the board, as people turned to virtual worlds to stay connected with friends while the real world was off limits.

https://twitter.com/ZhugeEX/status/1390206156631592960?s=20

I was quoted in this @IGN article about the announcement of Battlegrounds Mobile India, which is Krafton's attempt to bring PUBG Mobile back to India.

Krafton is aiming to make changes that please regulators in the country.

in.ign.com/india/158756/n… For those unaware, India banned mobile games and apps from Chinese developers, due to tensions between the two countries.

While the PUBG IP is owned by South Korean company Krafton, PUBG Mobile is developed by Tencent and was banned.

nikopartners.com/the-impact-of-…

Ok, I watched the Dynasty Warriors movie.

I think there are some really good parts that capture the spirit of the IP, especially in the second half of the movie.

But a lot of that is undone by a weak script, some questionable casting decisions and not great acting.

1/ The storyline focuses on the Yellow Turban Rebellion period to the Fall of Dong Zhuo.

The movie tries to mix in a traditional Romance of the Three Kingdoms drama / movie, with the action of Dynasty Warriors.

I do agree that it doesn't do either all that well ultimately.

The Nintendo Switch has sold in 84.59m units as of March 31, 2021.

Total software sell in for the console has reached 587.12m.

Nintendo sold approximately 28.83m units of hardware and 230.9m units of software in the past fiscal year. Here is a breakdown of quarterly hardware sell in

The original Nintendo Switch console has sold in 6.89 million units while the Nintendo Switch Lite has sold in 14.7 million units in total

OG Switch continues to be the better seller

Pandemic boost still in effect this quarter

This isn't too unusual for the console space

The console is sold at a loss initially & usually for some time after

The platform holder recoups the investment in hardware via its own first party game sales + services + the cut it takes from third parties that sell games / DLC

https://twitter.com/thedextriarchy/status/1389980935479824384

Hardware being unprofitable certainly played a bigger role in the late 90's and early 2000's (oh and PS3 era lol).

Both the PS5 and Series X/S are being sold at a loss right now, but will become profitable down the line most likely.

Nintendo is somewhat of an outlier.