阿里巴巴获得《旅行青蛙》国内独家代理权
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group announced a strategic partnership with Japanese game developer Hit-Point, granting Alibaba exclusive rights to publish the mobile game Travel Frog in the Chinese mainland. It marks the company's latest move to charge into the gaming business to keep its growth momentum strong. From its release in December to March this year, the game was downloaded more than 16 million times by Chinese iPhone users. "The partnership will help Alibaba further tap into the gaming sector," a Beijing-based independent gaming analyst said. "Under the partnership, Alibaba will be able to further analyze the product and have a better understanding of how to make a mega hit in the market, which will fill its gap in terms of developing games," he added. Alibaba's founder Jack Ma previously said the company "would rather starve to death than live on games", but the situation has changed and it is now taking aim at Tencent Holdings Ltd's dominate position in the booming games market. A report by the Game Publishers Association Publications Committee, Gamma Data Corp and the International Data Corporation shows that revenue of the gaming market grew by 23 percent year-on-year to 203.6 billion yuan ($32.4 billion) in China in 2017, with more than 60 percent contributed by Tencent and NetEase Inc. |