The Chinese online gaming market will expand at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15,57%, according to IDC forecast.
In 2012, actual sales revenue of the China gaming market had a year-on-year growth of 35,1%.
IDC’s China Gaming Market 2013-2017 Forecast and Analysis highlighted some trends to expect from China’s games industry.
Online gaming is to become a key element of the pan-entertainment industry.
“Pan-entertainment is more than news and publishing, radio, television, and movies, which constitute the core layers of the entertainment industry,” says Yolanda Zhang, senior research analyst for Internet and gaming industry research at IDC China.
She explains that pan-entertainment includes peripheral layers such as online gaming, online literature and online video, which are characterized by their market-oriented operability and openness.
“Therefore, online gaming will play a key role in leading the Internet towards pan-entertainment.”
Mobile gaming is also set to become the major driver for stimulating the growth of the online gaming market.
Mobile gaming has become the major growth engine that has increased the revenue of the online gaming market. In 2012, the sales revenue of the China web games market increased by 46,4% as compared to the previous year. Over the next five years, IDC expects this market to expand with a CAGR of 30%.
On the other hand, China’s mobile game market is growing at an even faster pace both in terms of market size and user numbers. The mobile game market showed revenue increase of 90,6% in 2012 as compared to the previous year.
Web games will become the major driving force in China’s game exports as more efforts go into increasing overseas market shares, according to the research.
IDC expects that the constant growth of Chinese emerging game products, such as mobile phone games and, in particular, web games, will further increase the revenue of China’s game export market. In 2012, the number of local self-developed games available for export totaled 177, up 35.1% from the previous year. By the end of 2011, the number of exported web games increased by 46 year-on-year to 103, with a year-on-year growth of 78,9%.
In 2012, actual sales revenue of exports grew by 57.5% year-on-year to RMB 3562,5-million. Web gaming was the fastest growing market, with actual sales revenue of China’s export of its original web games increasing by 79,5% year-on-year to RMB 1 425-million.
In 2012, China’s Web games were especially popular in Greater China and Southeast Asia, with 113 Chinese online games exported to the former and 110 to the latter.
Even with the presence of facilitators such as companies teaming up for overseas expansion and the Chinese government’s proactive and encouraging guidance, challenges such as cultural differences, product homogeneity and increasingly intensified competition from local gaming enterprises in foreign markets remain.
