Pokémon Go, introduced in 2016, is a popular augmented reality game in the world but has not been available in mainland China, but this year the game may be introduced to China.
Yesterday, the Financial Times reported that Niantic, the developer of Pokémon Go, has entered into a partnership with Netease Corporation in China. In addition to planning to introduce its own games, it may also develop new games for the Chinese market in the future.
Affected by the year-over-year decline in Pokémon Go, Niantic's overall revenue was less than in the previous year, but John Hanke, Niantic's chief executive, said Pokémon Go was still very profitable.
According to market research firm Think Gaming, while Pokémon Go's number of players dropped to a maximum of 148,000 daily games from just 1.6 million when it was first launched in July 2016, revenue actually dropped only 23% , Revenue per minute is about 99.52 US dollars, the remaining core players contributed nearly 80% of revenue.
In an effort to expand Pokémon Go's number of players, Hank told the Financial Times that it plans to bring its games to China.
Niantic CEO Hank (John Hanke)
'We really wanted to bring our existing games to China,' said Hank. 'In addition, we will also have the opportunity to develop games in China that will target both China and the world.'
Niantic completed a round of $ 200 million financing in November 2017 with investors including NetEase, and under current legislation Niantic wants to have a one-China partner in order to legally sell games in China.
At the beginning of the line, Pokémon Go used the Google Map as a game built-in map, which is currently not available in China, but some players found out last month that Niantic has changed the map data from the original Google Map to the OpenStreetMap service.
But partners and maps are not all problems.
In January 2017, the announcement of China's State Administration of Radio, Film and Television said that Pokémon Go games are not being approved for the time being because there are also major social risks in operations such as threats to geographic information security, social traffic safety and consumer safety Threat and so on.
Outside of Pokémon Go, Niantic's other game, Ingress, also has problems with a huge community of players around the world. Unlike normal online games, players in these communities often organize events, gather offline, and many others simply because of the game Rushed to another city, these may cause trouble in China.
Recently, the media XMl inkup contact Netease, Netease said there is no plan to Pokémon Go into China.
In addition to Pokémon Go and Ingress, Niantic is also partnering with Warner Bros. to launch an AR game adapted from the Harry Potter series, which will be available in the second half of 2018.