What did Netease’s CEO really said?

My last article on this particular subject can be found here:
http://chinese-net-gaming-stock.blogspot.com/2009/01/chinese-net-cafe-gamers-reduced-by-30.html

In it, a local newspaper where Netease resides had a short article. In that article, Ntes’s CEO said there is 30% reduction on the number of players that plays in Internet Cafes. As a result, price of all China’s game company crashed. Price of Ntes crashed from $22.78 down to as low as $16.61.

Now, there is another newspaper article that shed more light on this story.
http://it.sohu.com/20090213/n262218156.shtml

Ntes’s CEO gave another interview to the local newspaper. In it, he mostly talks about the effect of global financial crisis have on the Quangdong province. But he did mentioned about what he said regards 30% less players in Internet Café.

He did said that according to Ntes’s internal survey, there are 30% less players in the Internet Café in some localities due to global financial crisis. But he also said that those players, rather than playing in the internet café, they now play at home.

Therefore, what he said is that the global financial crisis has some effects. It might have some negative affect on the internet café. Rather than spending money to go to the neighborhood internet café to play games, players play at home. Therefore, it does save some money to the players. But its net effect to Ntes is negligible.

He said the reporter report the first part of what he said (30% decrease in internet café), but the reporter chose to ignore the second part of what he said (those players play at home instead).

He also said global financial crisis has very little affect on internet gaming. He thinks internet gaming industry is resistant to the cyclical nature of the economy.

If one follows Chinese news reporting (like I am), one will know Chinese reporters not just report news, many times they manufacture news. Reporters are under tremendous pressure to come out with as much sensational news as possible. Thus, a lot of them manipulate the interview so as to get a much more exciting story, even though they have to resort to deceit.

By now, I think we can put this story to pasture. There was never anything news worthy in this story.