Soft-World International Corp (智冠) is betting big on nostalgic marketing as it prepares to reboot classic titles on smartphones in the second half of the year.
Following the success of other revivals such as the smash-hit Lineage M, Maple Story M and StoneAge M, the company is gearing up to launch a mobile version of TS Online (吞食天地) next month, a classic massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) that was first released on PC in 2003.
TS Online could push Chinese Gamer International Corp (中華網龍), Soft-World’s game development subsidiary, back into the black at the end of this year, Soft-World chief financial officer Chung Hsing-po (鍾興博) told an investors’ conference in Taipei yesterday.
TS Online could be the first hit title that was wholly developed in-house, which offers much higher margins compared with distributing games made by other studios, Chung said.
“It has become evident that players are every receptive to old favorites,” Chung said, adding that a slew of classic titles that have gone mobile have quickly soared to the top 10 games on the iOS and Android app stores.
If TS Online makes it to the top 15 on app stores, it could easily bring annual sales of NT$50 million (US$1.63 million), Chung said.
The game has attracted more than 60,000 players since pre-registration began last month, he said.
The company plans to launch two more “M” titles next year and in 2020, while intellectual-property licensing deals with Chinese game developers would add momentum to revenue growth, he said.
The company also plans to consolidate its digital marketing businesses to prepare for an initial public offering in the first half of next year, he said.
Soft-World has begun to consolidate its payment and financial technology (fintech) ventures after racking up losses of more than NT$90 million at the end of last year, of which NT$60 million were attributed to fintech and payments.
The company is to merge its fintech and payment units with Neweb Technologies Co (藍新), its 59 percent-owned investee.
Under Neweb, the company would focus on providing payment gateway services for smaller chain store operators in a move to boost coverage of ezPay (台灣支付), its mobile payment app, while also winding down costly promotional campaigns, Chung said.
Soft-World’s net income in the first half dropped 30.74 percent annually to NT$181 million, with earnings per share of NT$1.43, while sales tumbled 70.85 percent year-on-year to NT$2.38 billion.
The company said that Chinese Gamer, which reported a net loss of NT$33.97 million, and fintech and payments units, which together posted NT$35.85 million in the red over the period, had caused a NT$21.31 million impact on its books in the first half.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six