The Pretentious Gamer

Having just visited the “E3 of China” for the fourth time – I had sworn the third was going to be my last – I was recently looking at some old photos of the very first one I attended, in 2005.

My memories of ChinaJoy since then mainly consist of consecutive increases in volume and average number of booth girls per exhibitor… to say nothing of the performances of said booth girls. The vast majority simply stands on or around elevated platforms amongst her contemporaries, DSLR shutters clicking inches away. On the other hand… someone told me this year that there were pole dancers. I did not see this. There were belly dancers in 2008, but no poles. My jaw has been saved from impact by the floor at least for this year.

While enormous at roughly 3.6 billion USD in 2009, the Chinese games market (read: Chinese online games market) appears to offer only a few categories of major market games, especially in terms of context, metaphor, and aesthetic. MMOG, pseudo-historical/period, high fantasy, cute, social networking focused, and … and that seems to about do it. There are more things going on under the surface, but to the average western gamer looking into Chinese games, close enough.

I noticed that back in 2005, major international publishers and first party developers were clearly in the middle staking out ChinaJoy, with many having a significant presence. Five years later, its hard not to be struck by their seemingly smaller numbers. They’ve already made their move now, most having partnered with Chinese operators or running dedicated sourcing studios.

What does the continual expansion of the local market, along with the increased reliance of international players on Chinese operators mean for the local industry and with the rest of us? The Chinese games industry won’t be just the Chinese games industry for long.

Simply localizing a Chinese MMO for the West won’t cut it. The other trouble is the business model, which has come a long way and is being caught up to by the rest of the industry even now, but I don’t expect to see any significant business model innovation coming out of a Chinese game presence in the West. The reason microtransactions were an innovation here was from necessity for the local industry to monetize here on a consumer market that simply could not sustain any sort of viability for traditional retail. While microtransaction-based business models are in the process of finding their places in the west, particularly in SNS and mobile markets, Chinese devs will not find the same success using the same practices internationally. But since they are powerhouses of their operation/monetization models, don’t expect them not to try.

What they need to be doing now is hiring international talent at their foreign hubs, and lots of it. Then along with whatever SNS or MMO based games they’re bringing to the west, they will need to develop original games tailor-made for the international market, ditching any expectations that may have accompanied them from the mainland. I believe one happily-dropped traditional issue would be a certain “influence from on high”, but thats another story.

International publishers and developers have moved from staking out ChinaJoy, just a few years back, to now working extensively with local (Chinese) operators.

For Chinese devs to move to the international scene? The law of the land is different. It won’t be about operators, business models, or monetization at this point. For them it will be about local (international) developers.

As long as E3 doesn’t start resembling ChinaJoy, I’ll be fine.

Should all be interesting, anyway.

“Instead of relying on adults to spend money they don’t have on things they don’t need, now we’ll have kids spending money they don’t have on things that don’t exist.”

Old and a dated look at Kwedit but still an amusing take on virtual goods and microtransactions in general.

I love this.

Not like it matters, considering the enormous pile of cash the big N has reeled in since the launch of the Wii, but Iwata has stated that Wii software isn’t so hot these days, and sales are down. Refreshing honesty!

Nintendo’s president Satoru Iwata has admitted that sales of the Wii console have stalled, in part due to a lack of must-have software.

The company released data yesterday that showed sales of the home console were down over 40 per cent in the six months to the end of September 2009, with 5.75 million Wii’s sold worldwide, compared to 10 million the previous year.

“Wii has stalled,” Iwata told a press conference, reports Andriasang. “We were unable to continually release strong software, and let the nice mood cool. We were unable to show a new game to become ‘the next thing.’ In the game market, once you‚Äôve lost the momentum, it takes time to recover,” he offered.

“With the price drop, sales returned to a certain level, but they just did not reach the level of last year around this time,” he said. “We decided that it would be difficult to sell enough to recover from the poor performance of the first half of the year.

However, Iwata was upbeat about forecasts for the full-year, with expectations the company can sell 20 million consoles by the end of March 2010.

“In order to reach it [the 20 million units target], we will have to move quite a large quantity, but it’s a figure we released after having felt the momentum returning.”

Preening for the press? They’ll be fine, but the Wii is reaching critical mass and should be on its way out, for sure. I’d be surprised if they reach that 20 mil mark. They already lowered it from 26 mil.

One unfortunate thing is the fact that it once again comes down to third party support. N64, GC was the same story – for the most part, the only people making money on Wii and DS is Nintendo. It’s a shame that cycle still hasn’t been broken, not even close.

This isn’t exactly a sad story per se – overall the Wii is obviously an ENORMOUS commercial success; Nintendo is still rolling in dough. However its still a story of unfulfilled potential for quality software and the user experience. Hopefully their next step will involve taking their pile of cash and cooking up something inspiring. I’d say this next round they won’t be taking any lead on input innovation… Microsoft seems to be in front there. The question is – where’s the innovation on output?

The past two years have seen the continual estrangement of Sony’s once fiercely loyal base of consumers. Specifically – all of Sony’s current issues notwithstanding(I’m certainly not ambitious enough for a commentary THAT broad at this point) – Sony’s PR situation has been prickly at best.

Just a quick recap:

So in short, not very smooth sailing.

I suppose they just had to see what else they could stir up with these: (after the jump)

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