Warman said that outsiders have misunderstood the complex market. Russia is the largest country by territory in the world, almost double the size of the U.S. and Canada. It spans nine time zones and shares borders with Eastern and Western countries, making for a lot of diversity. Eastern Europe has a relatively high Internet penetration of 62 percent, or 209.6 million online users out of a population of 337.5 million. The online population includes 138.3 million gamers. In Russia, the number of gamers is 61.8 million, ranking it fifth in raw numbers.
“I find the Russian games market to be as intriguing as that of China,” Warman said. “There are actually several striking similarities between the two, making Russia an even more attractive market as gateway to the East. Hard market data and a deeper cultural understanding of the market reveals that Russia deserves to be valued as a primary games market, in many cases boasting more potential than the default route of localizing a game into German, French, or Spanish.”
While there are about 140 million Spanish-speaking gamers compared to 67 million Russian-speaking gamers, the gap is smaller when you focus on paying gamers, Newzoo found. That’s important as game developers decide where to localize their games. Russian gamers are big fans of PC massively multiplayer online games, where that market has the potential to become an even bigger market than Germany. Yet many Russians are dissatisfied with the slowness of how games are localized to their market.
Local businesses like Mail.ru, a rival to Gmail, control the majority of web and social media. And Russia is often a good stepping stone to the Chinese games market, Newzoo said. Piracy has been reduced to the fast growth of free-to-play games in Russia.
Console games on the TV are largely ignored in Russia, with only 32 percent of all gamers playing that way. But about 66 percent of Russian gamers play on tablets and mobile devices. Oddly, Russia was one of the few countries in the world where King’s Candy Crush Saga was not one of the top 10 grossing mobile games in 2013.（source：venturebeat）
2）Analyst: Watch Dogs likely sold more than 5M copies by end of June
Jeffrey Grubb
French publisher Ubisoft has another megafranchise in its portfolio.
After selling 4 million copies of the new open-world action game Watch Dogs in its first week, analysts Nick McKay, Nick Citrin, and Michael Pacthter for investment company Wedbush Securities predict that the game likely went on to sell another million copies before the end of Ubisoft’s quarter. That would put Watch Dogs at 5 million copies sold through the end of June, which is just over a month after the game’s May 27 release.
“[Ubisoft] previously stated that it expected sales of Watch Dogs to exceed those of the first Assassin’s Creed in its first fiscal year,” Pachter wrote in a note to investors. “[The first Assassin's Creed sold] 6.3 million units. We believe that Watch Dogs is well-positioned to easily surpass that figure by year’s end.”
Ubisoft will report the results of its first quarter for fiscal 2015 on July 10 after the French market closes. In April, the publisher advised investors that it expected to generate $422 million. Wedbush expects Ubisoft to report revenue closer to $429 million, and the analyst says that estimate is “conservative.”
Watch Dogs is a huge success for Ubisoft. It already set a 24 hour sales mark for a game from the publisher. With Watch Dogs resonating, this gives the French publisher the chance to annualize the franchise.
Ubisoft has released a new Assassin’s Creed for consoles and PC every year since 2009′s Assassin’s Creed II. This enables the company to practically guarantee a triple-A blockbuster, which pads its yearly earnings. It will likely attempt a similar strategy with Watch Dogs.（source：venturebeat）
3）Miyamoto: I fear that smartphones are becoming the norm for games
By Mike Rose
“I have a sense of fear in that ‘hand-me-down smartphones’… are becoming hardware systems on which to play games due to their prices being lower than that of our most inexpensive video game system in our history.”
- Shigeru Miyamoto talks smartphones to a room of Nintendo investors.
During the recent Nintendo general meeting of shareholders, the company once again found itself under fire from investors who want to know why Nintendo isn’t making smartphone games.
Miyamoto admitted that he is now fearful of the impact of the mobile industry on Nintendo’s business, but he added that there will always be a place for traditional video games.
