According to an analysis report of ishopvideogame, many video game firms don’t like to set foot in the Chinese market. They think that they have no profit. Nor, in truth, there will benefit greatly from China if they know how to overcome the difficulties and obstacles appearing in the economical process. Now, let us analyze that which kind of obstacles will prevent you from obtainning a benefit from Chinese market.

1)Domestically-produced games
China has a number of domestically produced games. These include the Genesis of the Century trilogy (The World of Legend, The Age, and Magical Land), Westward Journey, Perfect World, Learn from Lei Feng Online, The Incorruptible Warrior, and Crazy Mouse. Many Chinese people feel it their patriotic duty to play domestically-produced games. And also, there’re many sellers who pretend to sell domestically-produced games. So there’re few video game shops which will sell foreign video games.

2)Internet cafes
Although China’s growing economy has boosted the economic prospects of most Chinese in the last couple of decades, the cost of a personal computer, video game console, or Internet connection remains prohibitive for many Chinese. Because of this, Internet cafes and Internet cafe gaming have become quite popular in the country. Rather than purchasing their own hardware and software, users are simply charged a small fee (often by the hour) to use an Internet cafe computer which often comes preloaded with a selection of games.

3)Piracy
Because of the high amount of software piracy in China, many foreign video game companies have been reluctant to enter the country’s market with single player or console games. Instead, they have focused on selling online titles such as massively multiplayer online games as income from these titles comes largely from subscription fees or in game item purchases rather than the purchase price of the title itself.
Nintendo claims that, as of February 14, 2008, China remains the main source of manufacturing pirated Nintendo DS and Wii games. This has resulted from its refusal to release any original products in the country.

4)Farming
As of December 2005, there were an estimated 100,000 Chinese employed as “farmers”, video game players who work to acquire virtual currency or items in online games so they can be sold to other players for real currency.

As for foreign game firms, all of these difficulties tend to be daunting. If they want to take a share of the profits from Chinese market, they have to overcome these obstacles firstly.

Source: www.ishopvideogame.com

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However, there have been some noticeable changes taking place in the online gaming arena over the past few years that have certainly surprised me some what. Whereas the games console market is dominated by a majority of young males, the skill games market finds the lion share of its business coming from the 35-65 year age range, with a slight skew towards women.

Skill gaming, which often involves the playing of multiplayer games online, was once a niche sector but is now quickly gaining mass market appeal. This is mainly due to the fact that internet access, especially broadband, has now made the seeking out of online entertainment no longer an exclusively Western pastime. In addition to this, skill games are not considered to be gambling and they therefore fall outside of countries’ anti-gambling statutes; These games can therefore be enjoyed is most countries around the globe.

Another reason for the extraordinary growth of these multiplayer games online is due to their addictive nature as well as their simplicity. Skill games are browser based games played in a tournament format, with each player paying a cash entry fee to play and with a cash prize going to the winner. They are often very short games of just a few minutes in length and have just a few simple rules to learn prior to getting underway. This means that they can be enjoyed during a break time at work and it has even been suggested that they not only improve peoples’ productivity in the work place but can also reduce work related stress.

The sites that offer such games often give the player the option of either challenging a specific individual or opting for a random person on the games network to be paired up with them. These multiplayer games online really add an exciting dynamic, especially when there is a wager on the game. In a large multiplayer tournament, considerable cash prizes can be won at the end of one of these simple yet exciting games.

All these criteria have helped propel the online skill games sector in to the mainstream of online entertainment with an ever broadening mass market demographic participating. This has lead to the inclusion of people who would never have previously considered themselves to be online gamers per se.

Experts are predicting that the online skill games sector will treble in size by 2011, reaching both an ever increasing global audience as well as ever widening age range.