NTES - XYQ status - expansion pack in October

My last XYQ article can be found here:
http://chinese-net-gaming-stock.blogspot.com/2008/04/ntes-xyq-and-tx2-update.html

I am not quite sure most people know the accomplishment of XYQ. It is the most popular MMORPG in the world, not just in China. Better yet, it is still growing and having no signs of slowing down at all. For example, it achieved a PCU record of 2.08 million players on 4/27/2008. Then four months later, it achieved a PCU record of 2.32 million players on 8/3/2008.

More impressively, NTES is able to grow paying games such as XYQ, XY2 as well as start another in XY3 while all of China had converted to free-to-play games.

It is clear paying games are here to stay in China. Actually, as all the games going the free-to-play route, paying games like XYQ, XY2 and XY3 as well as NCTY’s WOW (World of Warcraft) benefits as many Chinese players started to get tired of the severely player un-balance that are un-avoidable in the free-to-play games.

From my server monitoring, XYQ had been very strong so far. But it is time for XYQ to get an update. The last expansion pact was released on 9/25/2007. There had not being any major update to XYQ for one year.

From the following article:
http://xyq.17173.com/content/2008-09-05/20080905110404458.shtml

A new expansion pact will be out on October 2008. This will be the eighth expansion pact for XYQ. It will be the first major update to the game from more than one year ago.

In keeping with NTES’s tradition, they are not going to be bothered to give this information to the Wall Street.

Anyway, this new expansion pact will be very helpful to NTES’s revenue growth for the 4th quarter 2008 and 1st quarter 2009.