NTES’s other new game, MF

My previous article on this subject can be found here:
http://chinese-net-gaming-stock.blogspot.com/2009/05/what-is-ntess-new-game.html

At the beginning of May, NTES announced a new game. But it won’t tell people what game it is. It wants people to guess. It created a web site: http://xyx.163.com to provide hints of new game.

(By the way, if one goes to the above web site now, it is showing another new mystery game from NTES. This is an indication of the tremendous activities of NTES’s gaming division.)

While everybody else in China was guessing some kind of major licensed games made by NTES’s partner, Blizzard, I believe it would be an advanced casual game, MF.

It turns out I was right. But a few hours after I published the above article, a lot of other game verticals in China also guessed the same thing. So I was not ahead by much.

As it turns out, I was right. That new game is the advanced causal game, MF.

The following is a promotional video of the game:
http://www.weplay.cn/c1/Mjg0PT5sI24gLA.html

From the above video, one can tell this game is a side-scrolling game, or a platform game. For those too young to know what those games are, these are the old (and I mean OLD) style games such as Super Mario Bros, a game all the way back to 1985.

I guess one would have the logical conclusion that why would anybody play such an old styled game. Well, it turns out that those advanced casual games are all the rage in China right now. SNDA has a big presence in this area. Tencent is king in this area.

Tencent just made $155.2M in the 1st quarter 2009 selling users playing these types of games (in comparison, NTES only made $98.6M in its latest quarter, 4Q08, from gamers).

Its most advanced and popular game, Dungeon and Fighter, DnF just had a Peak Concurrent Users of 1.8M on 5/4/2009.

One can see what the game looks like in the following video:
http://act3.games.qq.com/games/686/show.php?id=672
http://www.weplay.cn/c1/PTw_OiUgbiFoJCU.html

As one can see, the graphics and gameplays of this game is not much better than the Super Mario Bros. of 1985. Yet, games like those makes Tencents $155M in the latest quarter.

So, does that mean the release of MF indicated that NTES is going to dominate the area of advanced casual gaming? I don’t think so.

Tencent’s games are not exactly ground breaking or even good to play. The biggest reason those games are popular is because they are tied to Tencent’s core Internet Messaging product, QQ.

Tencent offers its core product, QQ, for free. But it ties so many other products to it. Now, it becomes the number 2 player in games, a top player in MVAS, and the number 3 portals, all of that thanks to the tie up to the QQ IM product.

So, in a nutshell, while Tencent can make any 2nd rated advanced casual games popular by simply tie them up to QQ, other companies have to come out with truly ground breaking great games to compete.

Of course, the above market phenomenon only applies to advanced casual games. For MMORPG games that NTES excel in, this doesn’t apply. For NTES’s major games such as XYQ and XY2, they are like self sustaining living communities. Most people are playing these games because their friends are playing in these games. Therefore, they are immune to the threat of Tencent.

But for an advanced casual game such as MF, it will be difficult to compete. One can find more information about MF in the following links:

You can download three videos of MF from the following 3 links:
http://mf.163.com/download/images/01.avi
http://mf.163.com/download/images/02.avi
http://mf.163.com/download/images/mf.flv

An interview with the head designer of MF:
http://tech.163.com/09/0507/00/58M0V13D000915BF.html