The Lord of the Rings Online Enters China

The Lord of the Rings: Shadows of Angmar (LOTRO) has now entered China’s massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) market. That is after the China-based CDC Games, a business unit of CDC Corp. and the exclusive distributor for The Lord of the Rings in the country, received the final approval for the game from the China government last November 18.

Based from the news release, upon receipt of the government approval, CDC Games will begin Open Beta Testing (OBT) for LOTRO, followed by commercial launch one week thereafter. CDC Games also announced that LOTRO has successfully completed its Closed Beta Test (CBT), wherein during the final phase of CBT, 2.2 million users reportedly registered, accompanied by a high activation rate during the last week of testing. Playing time steadily increased throughout the CBT, resulting in average play of four hours per session. In fact, during the final week of CBT, LOTRO has continued to rank in the Top 10, including number 1 and number 2 rankings, for the highly anticipated games and downloads categories in popular games sites and portals.

But why is China, despite the hassle of government approvals and censorships, an important market for LOTRO, which is developed by North American-based Turbine Inc.? For one, it is a “massively multiplayer market” with still untapped regions offering significant number of subscribers and online players. But just how massive is it? Let’s take the mobile service industry as an example. China is home to the biggest mobile service provider worldwide in terms of number of subscribers—China Mobile—which has more than 513 million subscribers. Compare that to AT&T’s 81.6 million subscribers, or T-Mobile’s more than 150 million subscribers globally (33.4 million subscribers in the U.S.). You can see the picture.

That is how just how massive the China market is, and the potential business it offers. So you can imagine just why Turbine would want its game released in the country, with the help of CDC Games of course, even with the hassle of government approvals. Because winning in that market is like having half of the global market share in of wherever industry you may be.