China's gaming market swelled 35 percent in '09, climbs to $3.9bn

Pearl Research has published a study revealing the Chinese market having super-sized last year as it grew 35 percent, and now worth $3.9bn.

The online gaming market in 2008 grew 63 percent in China, and Pearl believes it’ll be worth a staggering $6bn by 2012. Social gaming for you.

”These games are starting to cannibalise some of the advanced casual games on the market,” noted Allison Luong, Pearl Research’s managing director. The growth of social networking sites are the cause of the huge leaps among the Chinese.

QZone, Renren and Kaixin001 are all big in the Communist-Capitalist state. Popular online games are Fantasy Westward Journey from NetEase, Zhengtu Online from Giant, Dungeon And Fighter and Cross Fire from Tencent and World Of Warcraft from Blizzard.

Tencent came out on top as the highest earner among online operators in China last year, pulling in revenue of $792m. Shanda Games were nipping their heels at $704m and NetEase much lower at $493m. What monster has social networking created?!

Source: Edge