China’s Netease expands to the US with new office focused on mobile gaming

Chinese tech giant Netease announced today that its gaming arm is making its first expansion into the West with a new office located in the United States. The new office, Netease North America, is in Redwood Shores, California, and the new team there is being headed up by former Ouya and Blizzard executive David Ting.

Ting told Tech in Asia that the new office will, at least for now, be focused primarily on bringing some of Netease’s best mobile games to the English-speaking market. “We’re not [just] doing a straight translation,” said Ting. “In some of the games we’re rebuilding core mechanics, including art, for the West.”

They’re also being fairly picky. From Netease’s large stable of mobile games in China, the US team has picked just eight to research. Of those, Ting said he hoped that perhaps five could be launched this year. Market research and user testing will be used to whittle down the number of games suitable for release. “We’re taking it very seriously,” Ting said of the office’s commitment to releasing games that will work in the crowded mobile games scene in the West.

In addition to mobile games, Netease develops and operates a profitable PC gaming business in China, but Ting told Tech in Asia that adaptations of Netease’s PC titles aren’t an immediate area of focus for the North American office. Some of the company’s most popular titles, like Fantasy Westward Journey II, probably aren’t suitable for Western release because they rely heavily on knowledge of Chinese culture and the Chinese literary classic Journey to the West. But other Netease PC games with broader appeal, like Crisis 2015, may be future fodder for localization from the Netease North America team. Ting also said that the company has “a few [PC games] being built right now with the global market in mind.”

Exactly what games are coming to the US when is still undecided, but Ting told me he’s most excited about the game that will be Netease North America’s first release: Speedy Ninja (pictured). It’s 2D endless runner with parkour elements, and despite the fact that it’s a mobile game Ting – who has experience in eSports – thinks it has the potential to be a competitive gaming title in the fledgling “casual eSports” market. The game has built-in anti-cheat, he notes, and Netease plans to work with Twitch to make streaming gameplay from Speedy Ninja easy.

Of course, there’s no shortage of competition in the American mobile gaming market. Netease brings a record of success in Asia and a US$15 billion market cap along with it to its new office in California, but neither history nor money is a guarantee of success. It does seem that the company is committed to properly localizing the games it releases, though, rather than just tossing out quick translations of games designed for the Chinese market and expecting them to sell in the US. That’s one of the most common mistakes Western game companies make when bringing games to China, and it’s good to see Netease planning to avoid that problem as it brings its Chinese games to the West.

More broadly, it’s interesting – if unsurprising – to see Netease joining the ranks of Chinese tech companies expanding well beyond their borders. It seems globalization is the buzzword at many of China’s tech firms this year. Recently, for example, Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi announced its own first steps into the US market. With growth slowing in Chinese tech markets and Chinese companies increasingly beating foreign tech brands at home, it’s likely that more Chinese tech firms will follow in Netease’s footsteps over the next few years. (And of course, many of China’s biggest gaming firms already have substantial investments in the Western gaming scene).