Chinese gaming revenues surge on growth in mobile

Driven by the booming mobile internet sector, top Chinese gaming companies saw significant growth in game revenues during the first half of 2017, according to gaming industry consultancy Newzoo’s latest global games market report.

Chinese video game giant Tencent Holdings Ltd has taken the top spot in the ranking of Newzoo’s Top 25 Companies by Game Revenues list, generating $7.4 billion in the first half of this year, a 50 percent increase over the same period last year.

Newzoo said the popularity of Tencent’s mobile game King of Glory, which attained 200 million players in China alone, has made big bucks for Shenzhen-based Tencent this year. Chinese gaming industry database Gamma Data Corp estimated that King of Glory raked in around 6 billion yuan ($911 million) in the second quarter in the domestic market, and its transactions would hit more than 22 billion yuan for the full year.

Chinese leading gaming outfit NetEase Inc continued to rank as seventh on the list, recording a staggering 53 percent year-on-year increase in revenues to hit $2.9 billion in the first half of 2017.

Newzoo forecasted that, driven by popular role-playing game Onmyoji and other mobile games, the Hangzhou-based gaming giant would be a strong contender for the global top five for the full year.

Due to the good performance in particularly PC and mobile gaming sectors, Chinese movie and gaming company Perfect World Co Ltd has made its first appearance on the list at 20th place.