The purpose of this blog is for my personal use. It serves as my personal diary as I investigate Chinese internet/gaming companies for investment purpose. If you have any comments or disagreement, please give me feedbacks.
BB's developer say June 2009 is current planned date for the open beta for the game. Because BB is going to be an item-based game (free to play), open beta is the same as commercial operation.
On 4/3/2009, NTES planned to have the 2nd technical closed beta for BB.
Now, I just found out that there is another major game that is ready to go.
On 4/3/2009 (4/3 is going to be a busy day for NTES), there is going to be another new game developed by NTES that will go into Alpha testing. The name of the game is called Genesis: Journey to the West (「Chuang Shi Xi You Online」, 創世西遊). I will call it CSXY from now on. It is an in-house developed 3D MMORPG game. The game engine the same 「Big World」 engine used for TX2. That game engine is licensed from an Australian company. It is going to be a turn-based game. At this point, it is not known whether this game will be item-based (free to play) or paying game (time-based).
NTES started the development of this game in 2005. Therefore, this is a major game that NTES had already spent a lot of resource on.
As can be seen from the graphics, this is a very beautiful game. Even though CSXY is another branch of the 「Journey to the West」 series of games (XY2, XY3, XYW, XYQ), it is clear that CSXY looks nothing like other Westward Journey games.
NTES uses the popularity of XY2 (the 3rd most popular game in China) to give XYQ a push at the beginning (XYQ was an offshoot of XY2). Eventually, XYQ is able to stand alone and grows to be the most popular game in China.
Similarly, NTES is going to do the same thing as CSXY. CSXY is going to be the 3rd leg of the 「Westward Journey」 series of games. Hopefully, CSXY can be as popular as XY2 or XYQ.
Just like Ntes comes out with a surprise Transformer game as their next major game, Sohu comes out with a completely new game as its next major game development. That development was completely secret.
The 4th quarter earning conference was just a couple of days ago, they definitely didn't talk about this game.
Now, the news is out. This is all over all the gaming portals in China right now. One can find representative news about this game below:
The game is just announced and the in-game graphics have been very few. The following is one of them:
It really shall be called BO2 because, in Chinese, its literal translation is Blade Online 2.
Sohu is still going to operate the original BO. There will still be a major expansion pact for BO in the 2nd quarter of 2009.
BO was a licensed game. But DJ2 (BO2) is not. It is completely developed in-house inside Sohu.According to BO's original developer, http://www.pixelgame.net/ , they have nothing to do with DJ2. I guess Sohu purchased the naming right from Pixelgame.
Let me do a recap on Sohu's game division. They currently have two games in operation. The major game is the self developed TLBB. It is being complemented by a licensed game BO (Blade Online). TLBB made $53.5 millions in 4th quarter 2008 while BO made $4.9 millions in 4th quarter 2008.
They have four games under development.
LDJ (The Duke of Mountain Deer) is going to be a self-developed major game. It is planned to be commercialized in 4th quarter 2009.
JianXian (Immortal Faith) is a licensed game. I don't think Sohu is going to spend a lot of resource on this game. It is scheduled to be out in the middle of 2009.
Legend of Ancient War is another licensed game. I doubt Sohu will spend a lot of resource on this game. It is scheduled to be commercialized in early 2010.
DJ2 (Blade Online 2) is another self-developed major game. Sohu claim this will be the first major game out in 2009.
If I have to guess, DJ2 will be commercialized in 3rd quarter 2009. It gives 6 or 7 months of closed beta time for Sohu to hash out all the bugs. If this becomes the case, then I will also predict Sohu will delay LDJ and LDJ won't be commercialized until 1st quarter 2010.
Sohu plans to have both DJ2 and LDJ as major hits and be as successful as TLBB. There shall be at least two quarters of time differences between releasing its two major titles.
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A little more information about Netease's next major game development (BB) can be found in the following article:
From the above article, my prediction was correct, it is confirmed by Netease game developers that they hope to conduct a major marketing campaign as well as open beta to coincide with the opening of the movie 「Transformer 2」 in June 2009.
BB will start closed beta on 2/15/2009.
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I noticed that Chinese game developers start to keep their major game development under great secrecy. I understand that they are doing that so as not to tip off their competitors. Nobody had absolutely any clues of the existence of Ntes's BB and Sohu's DJ2 until now, a few months before their commercial release. Thus, it gives no time for smaller game studios to develop cheap knockoffs to steal their thunders.
But this will definitely make it more difficult for people to keep track of their game development.
Wow, this is a surprise. This really comes from nowhere. Obviously, NTES is going to have another new game. More information about this game can be find here:
Some graphics for the in-game transformer characters can be found here:
There is very little information about this new game. But I think this is going to be a major MMORPG. But it is clear that this game's emphasis is on fighting. There will be many features for fighting, both individual fighting and group fighting.
This game will represent a complete break from other NTES's games. All other NTES games (except FF2) are based on ancient Chinese characters. FF2 was the lone exception. FF2 is based on western characters. So is BB. This game will be based on the western cartoon characters of Transformers. BB will have much more emphasis on fighting.
BB will be a 3D game. TX2 was the first 3D game for NTES. But TX2』s 3D game engine is not developed in house. It uses the Big World engine developed by an Australian company. FF2 is a 3D game also. Its game engine is developed in-house. But there is no comparison on the complexity level between the two games.
It will be interesting to know if BB's game engine is in-house developed or not. If BB's 3D game engine is developed in-house, it would mean NTES had a technology breakthrough. But at this point, we just don't know.
Another interesting thing about this game is that NTES will synchronize the release of this game with the movie Transformer 2. It probably means NTES already had a marketing deal with Di Bonaventura Pictures (the maker of Transformer 2).
NTES almost never market their game. It will be very rare for them to go through all the trouble of doing co-marketing with a popular movie. At this point, we just don't have enough information to know if this is the case. But if this implication is correct and NTES will do a major co-marketing with the movie, it would indicate that NTES is placing great hope, money, and effort on this new game.
Transformer 2 the movie is scheduled to be premiered on 6/26/2009. As announced in the above article, the game BB will be synchronized to operate at the same time.
That will mean BB will start commercial operation by the end of June, 2009. That is pretty fast. That means maximum of 5 months for closed beta. That is pretty aggressive scheduling. That will be tough to do.
At this early time, there is no video information on this game. But if one really paid attention, one can probably guess about the existence of this game one and half year ago.
A video was posted on 10/16/2007. It was a promotional video made by Netease for them to recruit college graduates. One can find the video below:
The whole video has 15:08 minutes. From the above video, on the 1:53 mark, a Netease employee talked about a new game 「創世西遊」. The direct translation for that game is call 「New World Westward Journey」. It implied a XYQ or XY2 type of game.
But pay attention to the above video from the time 10:30 to 11:10, and from 13:30 to 14:30, one can see clearly a brand new game that is completely different from any game Netease ever made.
It is pretty certain that game is this new Transformer game. For competitive reason, Netease has to keep this major game as top secret. Ntes had to conduct a disinformation campaign and to make its competitors think its next major game is going to be a XYQ or XY2 type of game while it is really a completely different type of game.
From all the secrecy and possible major marketing promotions, this is probably the game Ntes put the most hope and resource in the past two years.
