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Anyone who’s a gamer will tell you that China is a huge market in the industry. Tencent has invested in several major publishers such as Ubisoft, Epic Games, and Riot Games – which it took full control of in 2015 – and recent games like Black Myth: Wukong have been a hit in the country.
Naturally, content creation surrounding gaming is also huge in China. Sometimes, I see clips of players pulling off some insane plays. Other times, it’s just a video of something funny that happened. But whatever the video is about, I notice that they often carry the Bilibili watermark.
The video-sharing platform has long been a major player, having been around for 15 years. Its game plan of serving content centered around anime, comics, and gaming has served it well for a while, but there are signs that it could pull away from its core audience. Check out today’s premium story to find out more.
Today we look at:
- Whether the power of anime, comics, and gaming is enough for Bilibili
- A pre-series A fundraise for an Indian domestic helper platform
- Other newsy highlights such as Alibaba unveiling over 100 new AI models and a possible taxpayer data breach in Indonesia
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Geeks are gone
Image credit: Timmy Loen
Sometimes, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” isn’t exactly the best saying, as Bilibili is starting to find out. While it served its core market of anime, comics, and gaming well, stiffening competition from other Chinese giants could end up forcing it to expand to new categories.
- New channels: Besides hosting and sharing videos, Bilibili has added livestreaming capabilities and expanded to other related areas such as mobile gaming, game distribution, and video production.
- The search for more: On the whole, Bilibili’s growth has started to plateau. While it saw a 70% year-on-year increase in revenue to US$3 billion in 2021, its figures for 2022 and 2023 were more or less the same.
- New kids on the block: The platform is now adding other categories such as baby, auto, travel, and fashion in a bid to broaden its target audience.
Read more: Will Bilibili abandon gaming fanbase to fight ByteDance, Tencent?
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