Game industry grows in revenue but faces challenges

China's game market surpassed 114 billion yuan ($17.84 billion) in sales revenues in the first half of this year, an increase of 8.6 percent from the same period last year, said a joint report by the Game Publishers Association Publications Committee and market research firm IDC.

China currently has an estimated 640 million game players, but the growth of mobile game players shows a slowdown from the second quarter of 2019, said the report.

The mobile game market surged 21.5 percent year-on-year to 77.07 billion yuan, and the number of mobile game players reached 620 million, a 6 percent year-on-year climb.

Independent games developed by Chinese firms continued to dominate market sales in China in the first six months of 2019, with sales revenues reaching 92.14 billion yuan -- a year-on-year jump of 15.4 percent. Market share increased to 80.8 percent from 76 percent in same period last year, according to the report.

In overseas markets, the sales revenue of China-developed games was $5.57 billion in the first half of 2019, surging 20.2 percent year-on-year, a higher sales revenue growth than within the Chinese market. The report showed role-playing games, simulation and multiplayer online battle arenas were the most popular, accounting for 83 percent of total sales revenue in the overseas market.

But Chinese game firms are faced with challenges from companies in the US, South Korea and Japan in overseas market.

The US, South Korea, Japan and China's game companies accounted for the highest proportion of games revenue worldwide, reaching 79 percent. Chinese companies only accounted for 16 percent, merely half of Japanese companies, said the news website 21st Century Business Herald, citing Dai Bin, a China-based mobile analytics firm App Annie's.