As China’s thriving mobile gaming sector hitting 12.52 billion yuan (around US$2 billion) revenue in H1 this year, China Mobile Games and Entertainment Group Limited (CMGE), a leading publisher and developer of mobile games in China, announced a lengthy list packed with star-studded international intellectual property partners last Saturday.
The company plans to develop mobile games based on existing brands by obtaining authorizations from brand owners as well as to create new original stories through cooperation with global top game development teams. Xiao Jian, CEO of CMGE, disclosed at the press conference that these new games will be released around Q4 this year or Q1 next year.
CMGE Partners & IP Brands
CMGE has partnered with renowned Japanese cartoon companies of Toei Animation and GREE to create mobile games based on their widely-poplar animated film series of One Piece, Ikkyuu San and Naruto. The company also cooperates with Japanese partners of Koei Tecmo and SNK to reinvigorate their previous hit games, either PC or Arcade games, and introduces them to Chinese mobile users.
As Japanese cartoons and games are highly acclaimed by Chinese audiences in the past decades, these IP brands and games are hugely popular among the post-80 and -90 generations, who constitute a dominant part of Chinese mobile players now. The reinvention of these timeless classic works may help the company to monetize the nostalgic feelings of Chinese post-80s and -90s who tend to cherish their childhood memories more when nearing or in their early thirties.
“CMGE will make strong collaboration initiatives with IP owners to improve the protection awareness of intellectual properties in the mobile gaming market,” said Xiao Jian. “Besides, we will start to clean up the pirated market in the meanwhile.”
CMGE set up another partnership with Shaolin Temple, the keeper of the Shaolin monk martial arts tradition. The monastery is long famous for its association with Chinese martial arts and particularly with Shaolin Kung Fu.
In addition to cooperate with existing IP brands, the Nasdaq-listed company also poised to develop in-house IP brand Sword of Souls with U.S. teams under the concept of “transmedia”, trying to build entertainment properties span multiple media of movies, games, cartoons, etc.
image credit: CMGE
