China has seen an enormous influx of Western values in recent years while rising through a globalized world. Businesses all want to tap into the Chinese market, home to the world’s largest population and a growing middle class. There has been a westernization of Chinese culture, for example in the movie industry where Hollywood reboots and an endless supply of ‘House of Mouse’ properties creep their way into our screens, both big and small, and are now developed with Chinese audiences in mind
The growing interest in targeting the Chinese market has been apparent in Hollywood for quite some time. Mulan is Disney’s next big effort to reap the rewards of the Chinese market, “Around 70% of Hollywood studios’ revenue is now generated overseas, compared with around 30% two decades ago. And Chinese audiences today are able to add millions to box office takings”. It’s no secret that Disney is targeting Chinese audiences, “Disney is aggressively targeting China,” Stanley Rosen, a professor in political science from the University of Southern California, told the BBC.
(see reactions to the trailer of Mulan, Disney’s upcoming live-action outing HERE)
Recent figures place China as the largest export market, by admissions, for European movies HERE.
“China accounted for 37% of all admissions to European films outside of Europe itself.” And likewise, for Chinese gamers—the Chinese gaming industry was worth US$37.9 billion and represented 27.5% of the world’s revenue in 2018—demand for international games is exceptional. Here are some examples:
Estimated downloads for Angry Birds was 100 million during 2011, tailored to the Chinese market with Angry Birds themed moon cakes (popular cultural dessert) available in China, allowing local fans to connect their virtual and physical worlds to the delight of their family and friends.
Candy Crush entered China in 2014, China’s Tencent launched the game in China through a partnership with King Digital Entertainment.
FIFA’s mobile debut in China resulted in the companies highest grossing day for a mobile game. “The company (EA) is “encouraged” by the game’s performance so far, explaining that the game delivered one of the highest-grossing days ever for any of its mobile titles.
Despite proven demand, less than 1% of international titles manage to see life in China each year as a result of multiple entry barriers that overseas developers face—language and communication barriers, localization issues regarding social media platforms and payment tools, a fragmented market structure and legal concerns such as intellectual property protection and ISBN approval for your creative expressions. Essentially, the remaining 99% of games are shut out as a result of this ‘selection process’. So with over 10 million developers worldwide and a market reach of over 1 billion mobile devices in China, APPTUTTi launched the first 24/7 online portal to bridge this gap by helping international developers overcome these barriers and launch their projects in China.
Our partnership with Unity Technologies is the latest reinforcement to this bridge, with APPTUTTi becoming the newest store on the Unity Distribution Portal (UDP). The UDP is a single-build solution from Unity to seamlessly distribute content to all game stores worldwide. This initiative significantly reduces developers’ costs and the effort of publishing games to multiple stores. Developers will only need to build their game once and upload it to a dedicated Unity repository, from where it will automatically be repackaged for and sent to the partnering game stores. Unity is the largest software engine for developers, powering over 50% of new mobile games with over 1,300,000 active developers creating mobile game content each month. Our partnership will bring together the largest community of developers with access to the largest mobile market in the world.