Daniel Ahmad
Director of Research & Insights at Niko Partners.
I analyze the video games market in Asia & MENA.
I tweet insights about gaming + more.
- It's often difficult to convey the scale of the games industry in China and how the companies developing the titles are often involved in multiple industries, but this article does a great job. A must read.
- This obviously isn't true given NetEase has openly used GenAI in its games and announced GenAI related features as recently as this month. Statement from NetEase: “The situation described did not occur, and we have not published any related policies.”
- If i had to guess, this is specific to the Suda51 game and likely related to its usage in creating in-game assets.
- As an aside, there's a tweet on this with 50k likes on the other site and NetEase's statement is basically "Stop celebrating, we're not doing that"
- Slightly misleading. They've said they're using generative AI tools rather than creating game assets with it. "We're already seeing instances where generative AI tools are driving costs and time efficiencies." - Strauss Zelnick. Like i've been saying, this is how most studios will use it.
- To be fair you could outsell the Wii U by being the slowest selling console of all time too.
- Official data from Nintendo provides some clarity on the weak holiday narrative: In Japan, Nintendo Switch 2 holiday shipments were up 37% compared to the Switch 1's first holiday. In the Americas, Nintendo Switch 2 holiday shipments were down 19% compared to the Switch 1's first holiday.
- In other words: Nintendo Switch 2 is the company's fastest selling console by a notable margin. High supply at launch + MKW helped early sell through. Demand in Japan remained strong through the holidays, while it was slightly weaker elsewhere. 1P software will drive demand going forward.
- The elephant in the room is whether tariffs and memory price surge will impact Nintendo Switch 2 pricing. Nintendo says no impact this fiscal year, but could put pressure on earnings next fiscal year (Apr 2026-Mar 2027) if it persists. Would need to reconsider pricing / strategy at that point.
- The beginning of the end
- Not only is the White House trying to say that Steel Production is back over a 1% increase, they conveniently left out the previous years.
- If you ever wonder why I often say Western analysis of China is misleading, it's because a lot of China experts (even the liberal ones) are primarily motivated by ideas of Western superiority to the point they end up projecting This is the first time this leading China expert has mentioned Epstein
- This is another one of their posts from when Biden imposed export controls that restricted China's access to high end chips. The default position of a lot of these guys is that the West should be doing this stuff. The idea that two countries could work together to develop doesn't cross their mind.
- China graduates around five million majors in science, technology, engineering and maths every year, compared to 500k in the US.
- I want to write a thread someday on how the West held back and continues to hold back countries from developing. So much could be achieved if poverty was eradicated and countries were allowed to develop. It’s a shame the US elite decided to defund education to entrench their own power.
- Also fwiw, the “genius class” aspect is overstated here. It’s just fast track / curated programs that help students progress faster / enter international competitions. There’s nothing inherently “genius” about the people teaching them or taking them. It’s more about the focus on education as a whole
- This site is being run by 2000s era forum / reddit mods.
