Thursday, March 03, 2005

Taipei Game Show

Taipei Game Show has passed, but was a huge success. As ever, the show was packed with enthusiastic gamers and game companies. Taipei Times run an article, written by Gavin Phipps, on the show and I also checked some information from other sources, including the show’s homepage (outdated by the way). This game industry trade show is especially close to my heart because I have attended it twice. It is really quite remarkable happening and illustrates very clearly the market potential in Asia. Anyhow, let’s go to the issues, which were at the spotlight in Taipei, this year.

According to the Taipei Times article, this year’s domestic participation was higher than previous years. For long, there have been big local game companies like online game operator Gamania, but this year it was the local game developers, which managed to get publics attention. Two years ago, while I was there, aquarium screensavers seemed to be the brightest financial hope for local ”game” developers, not counting those local online game titles – RPG and RTS clones.

What comes to present trends, Gavin notes that while PC segment is still going on strong, the console market is the way of the future. Reasons are the same business related facts that can also be spotted on other markets – it is expensive to update computer, while consoles have much longer lifespan. Locally the additional advantage for consoles comes from increasingly localized content. Gamers can now get their hands on titles that are culturally closer to Asian mentality than your average Western title. Anime styled games have become more popular and the market has more variety than before.

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