Online games firms lose ground to Chinese, foreign companies
Vietnam is the biggest online game market in Southeast Asia with turnover of $237 million in 2013, and the sixth largest market in Asia. Though revenue from the games has been increasing steadily, the market is mostly controlled by foreign game developers.
Niko Partners forecasts that the revenue of the games industry in Southeast Asia, including Vietnam, could reach $1.7 billion by 2017. The Vietnamese industry, despite being only 10 years old, is promising, with a high growth rate of 50-100 percent per annum and approximately 20 million gamers.
However, PC and console games are not dominated by domestic games developers, including major companies like VNG, which is valued at $1 billion, and VTC and FPT, the largest information technology group in the country.
An analyst estimated that 90 percent of the PC games available in the market are sourced from China.
Studio Game Emobi once tried to develop and distribute 7554, a game focusing on the famous battle of Dien Bien Phu, which was believed to be the first made-in-Vietnam electronic games with strong graphics configuration.
However, the game developer did not succeed, as only 5,000 copies were distributed. Turnover was VND17 billion, too small to cover the production cost of $1 million.
The lack of success caused other domestic producers to think twice about the market. After 7554, Emobi planned to make another game, Sat That, but could not find investors.
Duong The Luong, director of VTC Intecom, said only 40 PC games and 60 mobile games have been launched in the market in the last six months, a small figure if noting that 500,000 games are marketed in China every year.
Only 10 percent of that number can succeed, and success is usually modest.
In the first six months of the year, VTC Intecom marketed four mobile games and one PC game, and only two succeeded, that is, did “not take a loss”.
Le Hong Minh, president and CEO of VNG, noted that domestic game developers could not make Vietnamese products because of a lack of money, human resources and the dominance of foreign games.
Domestic firms, in order to earn enough, are now thinking of distributing their products overseas.
Ta Nam Anh, VNG’s mobile game distribution director, confirmed that the company was planning to distribute VNG games in some small markets.
However, this is not the first choice of domestic game firms, because it can be costly to distribute games overseas.
Domestic firms have been earning money mostly from the distribution of foreign games. However, that market is a difficult one to penetrate, as it is dominated by four major companies, VNG, Garena, VTC and FPT.
It is estimated that the total revenue of Vietnam’s game industry in 2014 will be VND6 trillion, of which 60 percent will be in domestic firms (for both game development and distribution).
