Top gaming players from different cities gathered in Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, to play in a League of Legends competition in September 2016. (Photo provided to China Daily)
Sales revenues from China's games market have soared this year, according to figures from the country's Game Publishers Association Publications Committee.
The committee, an industry group for game publishers, recently released the 2017 China Game Industry Report which updates the size of the industry and analyzes trends.
According to the report, the actual sales revenues of the Chinese market reached 203.61 billion yuan (about 30.9 billion US dollars) this year, a 23 percent increase from a year earlier.
The figure is 11 percent higher than game market researcher Newzoo's forecast of 27.5 billion dollars in July and is enough to keep China in the top spot on the global game market, 500 million dollars more than the second-placed US.
Mobile gaming continues to account for the largest share, increasing to 57%, while the number of users rose by 4.9 percent compared with last year. The revenues increased by 41.7 percent over the same period last year, which means that new and old users are more willing to spend money on mobile terminals. Web games share dropped 16.6 percent from last year and users were down 6.6 percent.
In terms of share distribution, China's market is very different from the rest of the world. The current global market is still dominated by PC games and console games. However, the income growth of the two of them is below 5 per cent. The 23.3 percent year-on-year increase in Chinese mobile games revenues has made it possible to catch up with the two platforms' share in the next five years.
China's web games and mobile games are challenging the originally stable overseas game market. The share of China PC games spending from micro transactions was 88 percent in 2016. League of Legends and CrossFire developed by Tencent dominated the market with 59 percent share of spending, while NetEase – Blizzard's long time publishing partner in China – solidified its second place in the market with help from Blizzard's Overwatch.
The profit model of Chinese games has been used for reference by foreign manufacturers. The huge income and mature gaming system also led to analysts' optimism about gaming.
