BEIJING, Jan. 15, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — KongZhong Corporation (NASDAQ:KONG), a leading provider of digital entertainment services for consumers in the PRC, announced a strategic partnership with leading Vietnamese game publisher, Soha Game, to publish its self-developed mobile game “Hero and Goddess”, taking a first step to expand into the burgeoning South East Asia mobile game market.
KONG self-developed “Hero and Goddess” is a strategy RPG mobile game set against a simulated Western mythology based game world. It’s game play is based on combining the aspects of questing, romance, city building, role-playing and a unique concubine progression system that supports a hero’s overall progression in the game. The game has hundreds of mythical heroes that players can customize and choose from. And the ancient gods and goddess like Athena, Zeus, Odin can become your patrons in the game.
According to 3rd party market research firms, the Southeast Asia game market — which includes Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam — is expected reach $1.2 billion in the next three years. Currently, the gaming market in Southeast Asia creates revenue of around $560 million and $240 million was generated from Vietnam market. The region boasts around 85 million gamers, and market research firms expect that number to grow to 132 million by 2017. Regarding smartphone game market, Vietnam is the second fast growing smartphone country around the world based on iOS and Android activations. In Vietnam, Soha Game estimates that they lead the market with over 53% of the total game market (PC and mobile).
Chinese developed games have proven to be successful in the Vietnam game market based on past commercial experience. The first overseas mobile game that Soha Game published in Vietnam was a Chinese mobile game Shenxiandao, which helped Soha Games achieve a record as one of the top grossing mobile games in the Vietnamese game market.
Soha Game is the top leading gaming portals in Vietnam, and is also the first choice for game developers all over the world who would like to enter the Vietnamese market. Soha Game dominates the Vietnamese Internet user base, which has 30 mn Internet users and 18 mn smartphone mobile phone users. Soha Game was the first to publish a smartphone online mobile game in Vietnam, and achieved the highest revenue in the Vietnamese gaming history.
As an important growth driver for KongZhong, the Company has established 10 mobile game development studios in Beijing, Shanghai, Xiamen, and Tianjin. KongZhong currently has a portfolio of 4 self-developed smartphone games, namely Pocket Fort, Heroes of the Three Kingdoms OL, Heroes and Goddess (aka Highlord), and Kooky Three Kingdoms, in commercial operation. In 2014, KongZhong’s smartphone game strategy will continue to develop and publish 6 to 10 additional high-quality mobile games. In 2014, “Kooky Three Kingdoms” already achieved a strong start in China and the Company expects a similar reception as the game is introduced to the APAC markets in the coming months.
About KongZhong
KongZhong (NASDAQ:KONG), listed in Nasdaq in 2004, is one of the leading providers of digital entertainment services for consumers in the PRC. We operate three main business units, namely WVAS, mobile games and Internet games. Within Internet games, KONG has the exclusive publishing rights for World of Tanks, World of Warplanes, World of Warships, Guild Wars 2 and other titles in mainland China. Since the acquisition of our proprietary smartphone game engine platform in 2011, KONG has expanded our smartphone game development team across 4 cities in China currently developing over 10 smartphone games across various genres, including MMORPG, RTS, military, and fantasy.
SOURCE KongZhong Corporation
