China's MOBA battle, part 1 - DOTA2 by Perfect World is rumored to be released in China on 4/15/2013

I don't think I had ever written about the Perfect World before. This will be my first article on Perfect World. Perfect World (PWRD) had been doing badly. I had not being following PWRD very closely. It used to be the number 1 company in China in terms of technology. But it just can't turn that early lead in technology into popular games. Now, NTES and CYOU had caught up with it on the game engine development. It also is not good at getting interesting import games.

I am still not sure about the prospect of PWRD. But I am certain in the next major game genie in China.

In most of the earning conference calls from all the Chinese gaming companies, I kept on having analysts asking Chinese gaming companies in the new development of web games or mobile games.

In my opinion, many Wall Street analysts put way too much emphasis on the web games or mobile games. Frankly, Chinese companies are horrible in developing anything new. A truly successful web game or mobile game is probably still 2 or 3 years from now.

But in the next two years, a brand new genre that will truly be immensely popular is the MOBA games. MOBA game is the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena game. One or (at most) up to three major MOBA games will operate in China.

At this point, it is still not clear who are the major players. For now, Tencent, Perfect World, Netease, and Activision are most likely the major combatants. But when it becomes more clear who is doing what, I will write a series of articles.

DOTA2 is a major MOBA game developed by Valve. Last year, PWRD licensed the game from Valve. Today, there is a rumor that DOTA2 will be allowed to play in China on 4/15/2013. See the following link:

DOTA2 in China (in Chinese)

This is major development for PWRD. It is still too early to tell if DOTA2 will be a blockbuster in China. But it had been a long time for PWRD to have a potential blockbuster in its staple.

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