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| World of Warcraft, Mega On-line Game, Goes to Netease |
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UONetease, China¡¯s leading dot com firm, has announced it has gained the Chinese operation rights for World of Warcraft, an online subscriber game by Blizzard Entertainment, an American video game developer and publisher. At present, the game is run in China by The9 City, another Chinese game company.
World of Warcraft is the world¡¯s most popular ¡°massively multiplayer online role-playing game,¡± certified by the Guinness Book of World Records, with over 11.5 million monthly subscribers worldwide and an estimated 62% of the MMOG (massively multiplayer online games) market. wow gold In China it is played by around 1.5 million out of its 20 million gamers, and is so popular that some players have become ¡°addicted¡± to playing it and the government has enacted a three-hour playing limit for players under 18 years of age.
Blizzard Entertainment and Netease declared jointly on April 16 that after The9 City¡¯s current contract for World of Warcraft in Mainland China expires, exclusive operation rights of the game for the next three years would granted to Netease. With this news, The9 City¡¯s share price slumped by almost 35% in two days. As the operator of World of Warcraft, The9 City has become one of China¡¯s three largest game companies. wow gold The game accounted for 90% of the company¡¯s total income in the last four years.
Earlier, The9 City CEO Chen Xiaowei admitted in an email to her staff that losing the dealership for World of Warcraft means the company will lose most of its present income.
Netease CEO Ding Lei promised that World of Warcraft user data would be transferred efficiently, as this was merely a technical problem. Users will be able to play the game on the Netease platform from June.
As for the choice of Netease as its new partner, Ding Lei said it was mainly due to Netease¡¯s operations principle in online games winning Blizzard¡¯s respect. First, Netease relies on independent research and development, and second, Netease works hardest among all Chinese online game companies against cheating tools, user account theft, and unauthorized servers.
Ding Lei denied the deal would bring changes to China¡¯s game market, wow gold saying Netease would focus on better entertaining its users rather than ruling the industry and boosting its share price.
Most of Netease¡¯s income stems from its game business. In the fourth quarter last year, the company earned $98.60 million from game business, while its total income in the same period came to $118 million.
Figures from the General Administration of Press and Publication show that despite the global financial crisis and its influence on the real economy and exports, China¡¯s online game publication industry earned 18.38 billion yuan in 2008, surging 76.6% year on year, and brought 47.84 billion yuan of direct income to other industries such as telecoms and IT.
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