p2pnet news view | Games:- China’s The9 and NetEase are apparently fighting it out for possession of WoW.

Last year NetEase teamed up with Blizzard Entertainment to license and operate titles in China, says Research Oracle, going on:

“The increasing number of Internet users and improving quality of games in China has provided growth potential for the online game industry and NetEase.”

Blizzard’s StarCraft II is expected to be launched soon, “to be operated in China by NetEase,” says the story.

Now, “We believe NTES is trying to take over operation of World of Warcraft from NCTY [The9], when the contract between NCTY and Blizzard expires in June 2009,” says Tian Hou on Pali Research.

“We also believe NTES is purchasing servers worth about RMB250M [about $36,592,614] from local vendors, which may be used to run WoW.

Says Pali »»»

“We believe it makes sense for Blizzard to switch to NTES. NCTY has received many customer complaints about the game operation, which Blizzard is unhappy with.  In addition, NCTY has a close relationship with Electronic Arts. EA not only has a 15% equity stake in NCTY, but also has licensed several games for NCTY to operate.  We believe Activision/Blizzard is uneasy with the EA and NCTY relationship.

Since Blizzard has already formed a joint venture with NTES to operate StartCraft II and the associated website Battle.net, we view the operation of WoW as a further step in the JV cooperation.

But, “we also believe NCTY would fight hard to continue its operation of the game since losing WOW means losing the whole business,” it adds.

APRIL 16 UPDATE:-

NetEase triumphs in WoW battle

Stay tuned.

Research Oracle – NetEase to survive current economic slump, March 18, 2009
Pali Research – Netease and The9 are Fighting Over WoW, March 26, 2009

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This entry was posted on Friday, March 27th, 2009 at 12:29 pm and is filed under Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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