With summer just around the corner, local online PC game developers and distributors are gearing up to attract students with new game titles during the peak season.
Soft-World International Corp (
Another game provider, Gamania Digital Entertainment Co (遊戲橘子), also announced yesterday new versions of its popular casual game titles -- Maple Story (楓之谷) and BnB (爆爆王) -- to spearhead its battle for youngsters' attention.
"Although the growth rate of the online gaming market in Taiwan has slowed, there are still new players, particularly elementary school students down to the second grade, that continue to join the market each year," said Chung Hsing-po (
According to a report released by market researcher International Data Corp (IDC) yesterday, online gaming subscription revenue reported by local game providers reached US$210 million last year, up 12.1 percent over 2004.
Excluding Japan, online gaming subscription revenue in the Asia Pacific region was US$1.39 billion, with Taiwan accounting for 15.4 percent of the market, making the nation the third-largest online PC game market in the region after South Korea and China, the report said.
While IDC noted that the 12.1 percent growth rate was considered flat as few games were introduced last year to stimulate demand, Hung Yu-ting (
Gamania's old games such as Lineage, one of its bestsellers, have continued to see revenue growth, while its new game titles, mostly casual games, have also earned a considerable amount.
As most casual games are free, players need to pay for virtual items, Hung said.
Alan Tsao (曹永暉), a senior analyst at IDC, said the income from selling virtual items made up a larger slice of the gaming companies' revenue than subscription fees.
Ghost Online, for example, is expected to rake in NT$30 million (US$919,173) per month in the third quarter, Soft-World's Chung said.
Mainstream online games have also shifted from the massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs) to casual games, Tsao said.
Given the low technical threshold for developing casual games, many gaming companies have turned to this market to grab a piece of the action, Hung said.
Soft-World, for one, turned some of its popular Jin Yong (金庸) series of games into casual games earlier this year, Chung said, adding that the saga games have received good responses.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
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New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last