Shanda (SNDA) on casual and visual reality games, and its home-user strategy (1Q05 conf call)

Online game operator and developer Shanda Interactive (ticker: SNDA) reported Q1 2005 results earlier this week. Here are key quotes from President Jun Tang and IR Director Donglei Zhou on management's earnings results conference call: 

On Casual Games

....The continued performance and the growing importance of casual games is a testament to our strong belief ahead of the general industry that casual games actually attract a much wider range of user than MMORPG's and present a tremendous opportunity for revenue growth and diversification....

On Magical Land

....Our in-house development, Magical Land, attracted over 100,000 peak concurrent users since its open beta testing started ramping two weeks ago. This is the best open beta testing result achieved so far in Shanda's history.

On the Home-User Strategy

....In terms of delivering our home user oriented strategy, online game is only one portion of it, of course very important. But in addition to that we have started to launch a music service and information and other portal type of content. So the strategic investment in Sina is well in line with our strategy, the home user oriented strategy.

On Visual Reality Games

….we have entered into a strategic partnership with the Chinese Science Academy to cooperate on visual reality-based games. These games not only use game, but also humans' actions captured by cameras to cooperate into the real game. So not only do we have the resolution, but also we have already taken action into this new area of interactive games.

(Quotes are from the CCBN StreetEvents transcript.)

Comment: Shanda's comments about the potential for casual games might remind readers of Linktone's (ticker: LTON) announcement earlier this week. Linktone is acquiring Brilliant Concept Investments, a developer and operator of online casual
games in China.

Shanda's home-user strategy revolves around IPTV. For a discussion of IPTV see here.