Local game developers and digital content providers urged the Taipei County Government yesterday to seek funding from the central government to create a digital entertainment industrial hub before Chinese rivals catch up.
“Because of the Chinese government’s protectionist policies, it was able to fend off foreign competition and allow Chinese game developers to create their own content for the vast mainland market,” Wang Chin-po (王俊博), chairman of Soft-World International Corp (智冠科技), said on the second day of the Digital Entertainment Summit 2009 in Banciao (板橋), Taipei County.
Soft-World International is the nation’s largest developer and distributor of online games.
The county has budgeted NT$2 trillion (US$60.81 billion) to nurture the dynamic random access memory (DRAM) and digital entertainment industries. It has also promised to build an industrial park in Sinjhuang (新莊) over the next two years.
“However, without a firm commitment to the digital entertainment industry and the will to make it Taiwan’s next trillion-dollar enterprise, we’ll simply end up with a real park with a lot of trees,” said Aaron Hsu (許金龍), chief executive officer and chairman of XPEC Entertainment Inc (樂陞科技).
If local officials do not pay attention to the industry within the next five years, the industry will soon be dominated by foreign companies, said Albert Liu (劉柏園), chief executive officer at Gamania Digital Entertainment Co (遊戲橘子).
“Singapore, for instance, has been very aggressive in luring foreign investment to their gaming industry through subsidies and tax incentives. What is our government doing to attract international capital? What do our officials offer to foreign investors? Are they even trying?” Liu asked.
Taiwan has already missed the boat on the gaming industry twice, a senior UserJoy Technology Co (宇峻奧汀科技) officer said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day