April 18, 2006
Oh Shanda, what will we do with you? Shanda is making very questionable moves once again. The9.com, following on it’s highly successful World of Warcraft partnership is now negotiating with Blizzard Entertainment with the expansion pack. This is very coherent to the9.com strategy and within their core business of interactive entertainment and online gaming. Here’s a summary:
Vivendi Universal subsidiary Blizzard Entertainment announced on Friday that it has invited Chinese online game company The9 (Nasdaq: NCTY) to negotiate the expansion set to World of Warcraft (WoW), The Burning Crusade. The9 is Blizzard’s current partner for WoW in mainland China, and also owns 30 percent of the company operating WoW in Taiwan. According to the release the expansion is currently planned for 2007 in mainland China, whereas previous expectations had the expansion hitting China in late 2006. According to several industry analysts, The9’s contract with Blizzard for World of Warcraft already gives The9 the rights to operate any expansion of the game in mainland China.
Meanwhile, after Shanda’s foray into countless incongruous decisions. This time they are going crazy, launching an e-magazine with an American company based on a kart racing game entitled “Crazy Kart”! Right, now there is a sorely needed product, that I am sure everyone is clamouring for. This has gone too far! I think someone is purposely trying to drive this company into the ground, or the people at the helm are drunk.
Why don’t we tally up the strange and mysterious the big S has made inpast months:
This is by no means a complete list, but it seems they need to do a bit more thinking in the decision making, wouldn’t you think. Any business shoudl stick to it’s core business, or else they should chage their core business to what they are doing. Shanda doesn’t seem to know what kind of company it is.
February 12, 2006
We are in a modern world where there are always new and innovative ways of getting your high. It seems Crack, Heroin and Ecstacy are no longer the drug of choice for todays Chinese youth. This time it is the internet. Yes, about 15% of Shanhai’s teenagers are addicted to the internet. Touted as “cyber addiction” they say that it puts teenagers into a “trance-like state”. On a side note, I think Trance music might be involved, what with all those free illegal music downloads and all.
This addiction includes online games as well. You might remember the 3 hour play limit that was imposed by the government to stifle the amount of time youths spent playing online games. This was of course sparked by gaming deaths.
All I have to say is that, where are the parents? Are computers replacing TVs as the automatic babysitter? If you have a child, live up to your responsibility and take care of him or her!
January 24, 2006
Yes, Shanghai now has the first test network of FTTH. No, it does not stand for Fantastic Television Treats for Home, but in fact for Fiber-to-the-Home. It is used to provide services such as HDTV, VoIP, Broadband Internet and networked computer games. I am not sure what this means in terms of IPTV and how the two will co-exist.
Another government group - The Ministry of Information Industry (MII, pronounced “Mission Impossible 1“) - has projected the amount of FTTH consumers will break 20 million by 2008. They have said that the test network has been set up in a “Residential area” of Shanghai, so that really narrows it down. Well, I can at least tell you it is not in my area.
This whole thing brings to mind the old concept of the Integrated Services Digital Network that tried to accomplish exactly the same thing as FTTH is doing today. Really, it was the same thing, but they seemed to be about 25 years too early. ISDN was first introduced in the early 1980’s, and was not widely accepted until the early 90’s, but never really got off the ground. It seems that having all your services on one line was a ridiculous proposition, mostly due to poor adpotion and high cost.
Nowadays, computers and connections are so inexpensive; it seems about time for something like this to come forward. It’s about time we had phone sex, internet porn and the Playboy channel on the same line!
January 12, 2006
IPTV is the new wave in entertainment. It will enable content providers to give us access to countless on demand programs of high quality… but wait, surprise surprise, the Chinese government has a problem with that. It was a inevitable occurrence, that seems to have found its time.
Seems that SMG’s IPTV service was disagreeable with the local authorities in Quanzhou. So much in fact that they got banned across the whole province of Zhejiang. Shanghai Media Group is currently the only nationally licensed IPTV provider. Even so, they were told to get bent local permission as well. SMG was cooperating with local telecom operators, but still that was not good enough. Yes, everyone needs their cut, apparently. Next thing you know, you’ll be sleeping with the fishes. Upon further inspection, Zhejiang decided it was enough when SMG had around 10,000 subscribers in Quanzhou.
Better get workin’ on that guanxi! SMG is already in “negotiations”, which probably result in SMG financing the college education of the state’s administrators and unlimited KTV sessions.
IPTV subscribers are happy in Shanghai and Harbin though, enjoying their favorite shows without interruption. Seems the right people got the right amount of favor in those municipalities.
Related links: Shanghai Daily
January 9, 2006
Tom.com recently held the 2005 TOM Online Internet Entertainment Awards in Beijing. Contrary to what we might believe as the most entertaining sites, there were no porn related businesses in contention. They are actually celebrating the consolidation of all sorts of entertainment such as music and video onto a digital platform. This is driven by the trends in mobile and Internet technologies, as they become more multimedia capable.
The voters were made up of millions of (Chinese) Internet users voting by Internet or mobile phone for their favorite artist. There were award from best Flash animation to best song, to best Internet video.
It does help that Tom.com is a heavyweight in terms of internet and mobile applications. They are in the top 3 for every segment of the internet enabled entertainment market. With their sway, they brought in over 60 media organizations and more than 20 popular entertainers.
CEO of Tom Online Leilei Wang had this to say:
”2005 was a great year for the China digital entertainment industry. We have seen the rise in popularity of music, Flash and DV content on the Internet and over mobile phones, driving the adoption and mass market appeal of the digital entertainment in China. As the leading integrated entertainment portal and wireless Internet operator in China, TOM Online is proud to be the organizer of this major Internet Entertainment Awards event to honor the people who help shape the future of digital entertainment in China”
The underlying statement is probably, we want to dominate this market, so get on board or get out of the way. Of course they want their business to be a success, and with this sort of behavior, they are well positioned to be the market leader. One has to wonder that how soon it might be before anti-tom.com sentiment starts creeping in, in reaction to their market dominance.
Not suprisingly, there was also a simultaneous webcast of the entire event. You can find the online coverage here(in Chinese): http://ent.tom.com/hero/index.html