CDC Corporation Forms Chinese Game Subsidiary

The Hong Kong-based, NASDAQ-traded CDC Corporation, which is both an enterprise software solutions firm and the owner of the large China.com portal, has announced that it is forming a subsidiary, CDC Games Limited, specifically to focus on online gaming in Asia. This new division will bring together MMO provider 17game, which runs massively popular Chinese MMO Yulgang, and the recently acquired, though not yet officially added Chinese casual gaming portal Gametea, which charges customers through virtual game merchandise and virtual currency management services. The recent popularity of 17game's MMORPG Yulgang was in the news over the ''Golden Week'' holiday period in China, when it achieved a record high of 246,000 concurrent users during peak usage periods and 9.8 million registered accounts -- an increase of 600,000 accounts during the holiday period. However, rather than follow the subscription model into China, as done by recent and successful launches such as The9's World Of WarCraft, the game is free to play, and sells valued-added virtual merchandise and services from its online game shop. This online game funding method is already popular in South Korea with games such as Kart Rider, but has only just been introduced to China, apparently with some success. Rudy Chan, CEO of China.com, commented: ''We are delighted to see the continued successes of Yulgang, with a double digit increase in peak concurrent users since our last update less than two weeks ago. With the newly formed CDC Games, we will further invest resources in marketing, distribution, technology and new game development, to ensure sustained growth of our online game business. We expect to identify and add more quality games to the CDC Games platform."