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Tencent faces a markedly different environment in China than Snapchat faces in the United States. First, gaming consoles are illegal in China. Second, Chinese
by tanzam75 13y ago
Tencent faces a markedly different environment in China than Snapchat faces in the United States.
First, gaming consoles are illegal in China. Second, Chinese people prefer to pirate rather than to buy software. Third, Facebook is blocked by the Great Firewall of China.
This means that Tencent faces no competition from console games, from packaged PC games, or from Zynga and clones. Thus, Tencent gets to collect a large percentage of the total gaming dollars (or rather, yuan) spent in China.
What's the likelihood of Snapchat getting game consoles and Facebook banned in the United States?
Does Snapchat really have a 10% chance of turning into the next Tencent? Or is it more like 1%? Or 0.1%?
- ghshephard 13y agoGaming consoles are illegal in China? No xbox/nintendo/playstation? Fascinating - What's the thinking behind that?
- tanzam75 13y agoOfficially, game consoles are banned in China to protect children from their pernicious influence. Unofficially, who knows what the real reason is? It certainly hasn't hurt Tencent, whose market cap is now greater than that of Sony + Nintendo combined.
- tanzam75 13y agoSpeak of the devil -- China just lifted the 14-year ban on videogame consoles today. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/07/us-china-gamesconsoles-idUSBREA0606C20140107 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/07/us-china-gamescons...