Leaders in the computer gaming industries from across the Taiwan Strait yesterday pledged to work hand in hand to increase their market share.
Taiwanese gaming developers, who have developed a considerable pool of talent over the past two decades, will be helpful to their Chinese counterparts, who have been in the business less than 10 years, a Chinese representative said yesterday at a seminar in Taipei.
"The gaming sectors in Taiwan and China will enjoy a huge boom should the two sides cooperate in game development, marketing and other aspects," said Mofei Zhao (
Last year, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau made 47 games, or 41.2 percent, of the 114 games introduced into their markets.
"Aside from the large, greater Chinese market, we aim to promote our games to the world, hopefully by 2008," said Zhao, who yesterday signed a memorandum of understanding with Michael Lin (
PC games first appeared in China in 1994 and have become popular, Zhao said. By the end of last year, there were 13.8 million households subscribing to online games in China, and the number is expected to hit 20.3 million this year and 33.6 million next year, he added, citing statistics from IDC Research.
About 68.3 million households had Internet access by the end of last year in China, and the figure will surge to 107.9 million households by the end of next year, IDC estimates. China's online gaming market was worth 1.32 billion yuan last year, and is expected to grow to 2.17 billion yuan this year and 3.33 billion yuan next year, IDC said.
Despite the expected boom in demand in China, the shortage of original games and the proliferation of "pirate servers" will hinder the development of the industry, said another participant in yesterday's seminar.
Pirate servers, which prevent online gamers from connecting to the servers of genuine online game distributors, are posing an increasingly tricky problem for the industry, said Zhang Zhihong (
But a local game distributor shrugged off the problem, saying that the Chinese government was already aware of the problem and would soon crack down on pirated game software and servers.
The gaming industries on both sides of the Strait should continue developing games of their own, said Eric Lee (李永進), president of Softstar Entertainment Inc (大宇資訊).
Made-in-Taiwan PC games account for few of the more than 250 games that hit the market every year. Some well-known and popular Taiwan games include the Sky Sword series (
"I think if the two sides are able to work closely, we don't have to wait for 2008 to bring our games to gamers around the world," Lee said.
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