Brian Bandsma

Investing In China's Online Gaming Sector

A couple of clarifications:

1) The Netease game you are referring to is called Fantasy Westward Journey. It is around 60% of total revenues and the other game Westward Journey 2 is around 22% of total.

2) The life span of the games are obviously more than 1-2 years as Westward Journey 2 is now well into its fifth year and Fantasy just completed 3 years. As a comparison the Lineage franchise is close to 8 years old and still going strong with the upgrade in 2003. Westward Journey 2 is supposed to have a full upgrade this year.

3) According to the Netease Kingsoft hired 1 senior developer from the company not the whole team.

4) Netease is the #1 email provider in China and has another potential blockbuster game in beta right now called Tian Xia which should go commercial second half of this year.

6) The9 has Guild Wars, Hellgate: London and Granada Espada plus others in the pipeline this year as well as the WoW upgrade, Burning Crusades. The obvious benefit of The9’s business model vs. Netease is though you give up a big chunk of the revenue to the content owner there is significantly less title risk as you just pick and choose the more successful titles and introduce them to Chinese consumers.