Niko Partners is celebrating its 22nd anniversary of providing high integrity data, insights and analysis as local experts with global expertise. In 2024, Niko Partners continues to cover five regions: China (Mainland China), East Asia (Japan and Korea), Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore), South Asia (India) and MENA (Saudi Arabia, United [...]
Three years ago, in early 2020, Wuhan announced the closure of the city due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Three months into my family’s confinement as residents of Wuhan I wrote “A personal account of gaming and life in Wuhan during the COVID-19 outbreak” to share my story about gaming during the initial Wuhan lockdown with Niko’s [...]
One of the biggest announcements from Not-E3 2022 was a collaboration between Xbox and Riot Games. The two announced a partnership to bring Riot’s biggest titles to Game Pass on PC and mobile this winter. Xbox Game Pass members will be able to play these free to play titles with additional perks unlocked, such as all [...]
Sony Interactive Entertainment Shanghai announced April 29th that it will launch the PlayStation 5 in Mainland China on May 15, 2021. The disc version of the PS5 will cost RMB 3,899 and the digital version will cost RMB 3,099. Sony announced that it was currently preparing Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart (Sony), Sackboy: A Big Adventure [...]
Blizzard Selling Overwatch Credits in China In accordance with the new regulations in China that require online game operators to disclose probability rates for random-chance loot boxes, Blizzard (through their JV with NetEase) announced their probability data. However, they are now taking a step beyond this effort and no longer selling loot boxes. Instead, in a [...]
VNG Plans US IPO VNG Corp has signed a preliminary agreement with Nasdaq Inc to explore an IPO. VNG, founded in 2004, has long been a strong operator in Vietnam. Vietnam, along with Indonesia and Thailand, are three of the countries we recommend watching for the highest revenue and growth potential as of our 2016 Southeast [...]
Sony has just celebrated its second year of selling the PlayStation 4 in China. The console originally launched in China mainland back in March 2015 and since then, Sony and rival Microsoft have been trying to grow the appeal of consoles in the country. With a population of over 1.3 billion, one may think that it [...]
Chinese Companies Hold 46% Mobile Phone Market In India According to Counterpoint Research, Chinese companies were listed as four of the top five smartphone brands in India as of 2016. Vivo, Xiaomi, Lenovo and Oppo (which is now leading the way in China) were the four brands eating up India's market share. Samsung led the way, [...]
China's iOS App Store Overtakes US in Spending Mobile analytics firm App Annie said that Chinese consumers spent USD 1.7 billion on Apple-sanctioned mobile apps in the third quarter, or about 15% higher than the nearly USD 1.45 billion spent by Americans during the same period. This is particularly remarkable considering the new regulations requiring licenses [...]
Blizzard & NetEase Renew Their Partnership Blizzard and NetEase will be entering their ninth year of partnering together to bring Blizzard's popular games to Chinese audiences. These games include World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, Diablo III, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, and Overwatch. The9, the operator who previously held the contract with Blizzard to bring their [...]
