Shanda sales to jump 9%
Chinese online games publisher ups sales expectations due to success of its free-to-play games
Shanda Interactive Entertainment expects to see its third-quarter sales rise by as much as 9 per cent quarter-on-quarter after the company added new online games to its roster, targeting web users in China.
The company's CFO, Grace Wu, claims that sales will rise this quarter by 6 per cent to 9 per cent from its CNY 837.6 million (USD 122 million) second-quarter revenue, as reported by Bloomberg. Shanda's success is partly due to its investment in free-to-play, micro-transaction titles.
"We've seen the gaming market explode because the item-based games are more affordable to play and are allowing far more people to play,'' Elinor Leung, an analyst at CLSA in Hong Kong, said. "Games are one of the cheapest forms of entertainment in China."