A big slice of the pie
My sources tell me that there are a lot of people in China. At least three, and no less than two. So it isn’t surprising to hear that China is continuing to extend its lead as the biggest game market in the world, forecast to grow to a $29 billion industry in 2017.
Gamasutra published a piece from source IHS Market Technology showing that despite consoles being illegal in China for a dry spell of 14 years up until 2014 when the Xbox One launched over there, gaming is huge with the mobile and PC market being extremely lucrative with PC itself taking 51 percent of the gaming market. Consoles have not yet won over the populace by and large with the install base of PS4 and Xbox One only amounting to 500,000 users, but this is likely to continue to grow as time goes on.
It’s pretty interesting to watch the critical growth of the entertainment industry in China. It’s so powerful that it can save bombing movie franchises to the point where the big question when a new film release hits is, “how is it going to do in China?”
On Flixist, our own Nick Valdez reported that the profits made by that new piece of shit Transformers flick Transformers: The Last Knight made dipping overall performance in its home country insignificant to the further continuation of the franchise (thanks a lot) so to see what sort of impact that market is going to have on video games going forward should be something to pay attention too.
Who knows, maybe Accolade can hit it big and find a new audience with the upcoming Bubsy game over there? I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
