GAMES DEVELOPMENT
88 Pictures, a successful animation and VFX studio from India, has launched a new gaming division 88Games. It aims to craft world-class indie games for PC and console audiences, by blending high-quality visuals with storytelling rooted in Indian rich and diverse history and culture.
The multicultural studio has assembled a team of industry veterans, led by Milind D. Shinde and Shiben Bhattacharjee. It already has three games in different states of development. The first game, slated to be launched on Xbox and PlayStation, is scheduled to be revealed at the upcoming India Game Developers Conference (IGDC) 2024.
88 Pictures has provided effects and visuals for shows including Emmy and Annie Award-winning “Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia,” and hits like “Gremlins: Secret of Mogwai,” “Transformers: The Earth Spark Season 2,” “Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight,” and “Fast & Furious: Spy Racers.”
Games are growing rapidly in India. According to the “Levelling Up: State of India Interactive Media & Gaming Research FY’24” report by Lumikai, the industry is valued at $1.6 billion in the 2024 financial year. The report also shows that the nation’s gaming market added 23 million new gamers, bringing the total to 590 million gamers in 2024. It is expected to surpass $9.2 billion by the 2029 financial year, a 20% five-year compound average growth rate.
LIGHTSPEED JAPAN
Chinese tech giant Tencent has expanded its Lightspeed Studios games developer into Japan. The new LightSpeed Japan Studio is to focus on premium (known as ‘AAA’ in the industry jargon) action games. It has appointed Itsuno Hideaki as head of the unit. Itsuno previously worked at Capcom and was producer of hit games including “Devil May Cry” and “Dragon’s Dogma.” Tencent will report its quarterly financial results later this week.
MANAGEMENT CIRCLE
Alibaba Pictures Group says that it has launched iCIRENA, an international version of Fenghuang Yunzhi, its cinema management software system, in Hong Kong and Macau, both of which are Special Administrative Regions of China. Fenghuang Yunzhi provides more than 5,300 cinemas in Chinese mainland with ticketing and an algorithm-assisted scheduling function that it claims boosts scheduling efficiency by 80%. It has partnered with Emperor Cinemas in Hong Kong, and Galaxy Cinemas and Bona International Cinemas in Macau.
SOHU SELLING
Sohu.com, one of China’s oldest consumer tech firms, reported net losses of $16 million in the three months to September 2024. That compared with losses of $14 million in the third quarter of 2023 and with losses of $38 million in the second quarter of the current year. Significantly, a court wrapped up the bankruptcy proceedings of Jingmao Culture Communication, the subsidiary which operated its cinema advertising business. That allowed Sohu to book a $35 million disposal gain within the ‘discontinued operations’ section of its latest accounts statement.
BEIJING LAW
Beijing-based author, activist and media lawyer James Zimmerman has transited from the foreign law firm Perkins Coie LLP to Loeb & Loeb LLP. “We are the same team and the same office space,” he noted in a memo circulated to clients. They include Shao Huijie, Sun Jiamu and Liu Xinlan, as well as administrative assistant Denise Zhou.
Earlier this year, Zimmerman’s non-fiction book “The Peking Express: The Bandits Who Stole a Train, Stunned the West, and Broke the Republic of China,” which recounts the 1923 events once known as the “Lincheng Outrage,” were put into feature film development. The film is to be directed by Chen Daming (“One Foot off the Ground”) and Chris Lee, a former head of Columbia TriStar.
