Everyone knows that the Chinese mobile game market is now the biggest in terms of downloads, and will likely overtake the US as the #2 most lucrative market in 2014.
But how can foreign developers access this market?
The answer is localisation, culturalisation and working with a trusted partner - that's the conclusion from the latest data from Chinese app store Wandoujia (Sweet Pea).
Going local
It's looked at the top downloads from foreign-developed games on its app store during the first six months of 2014.
It labels all of the top six as having a local publisher.
(In the case of Plants vs. Zombies 2, it's listed as having a local studio thanks to the input of EA's local PopCap China studio, which handles all EA's mobile releases in China.)
As for the next five games, all are western-developed but released by local publishers such as TalkWeb, iDreamsky and Yodo1, with significant rebranding of artwork for local tastes.
For example, the Chinese version of Temple Run 2 published in China by iDreamsky features Chinese celebrity Liu Yan.
[source: Wandoujia]
