Netease - A great article on NTES

There is a great article on the inside thinking of NTES. It is based on an interview with the vice president of Netease on 1/23/2007.

The link:
http://news.17173.com/content/2007-01-29/20070129110516290,1.shtml

Summary:

- Both XY2 and XYQ hit a rough spot after the Japanese flag incident. But they are growing again. XYQ hits an all time high on December while XY2 hit an all time high on October.

- In 2007, XY3 will be replacing XY2. XY3 will have a completely new engine and graphics. All of XY2’s player statistics will be ported to XY3.

- Haven’t start the sequel to XYQ yet. But XYQ will have an expansion pact in January.

- Doing fundamental research on mobile games. But no plan in sight to have an actual game out.

- DaTang2 will be free-to-play. Has not made a decision on whether Fly for Fun 2 will use free-to-play model yet, but mostly like will also.

- Has no plan to export game.

- Feels the core value of the management is to provide employee a fun working environment.

- Doesn’t believe that player will play Netease’s game because it is made by Netease. Believe players play Netease’s game because of the games themselves.

- Talked about the popular ZhengTu game. Says Netease is trying to learn from ZhengTu in how to marketing the game and how to promote the game. Feels by seeing how ZhengTu doing its on-line game, Netease can learn a lot from it.

- Give prop to Shanda for completely change their games to free-to-play models.

- TX2 will probably in commercial operation on March 2007.