"Romance of the Three Kingdoms" is to China what "Morte d'Arthur" or "Antony and Cleopatra" is to the West: a centuries-old telling of an even more ancient history of kings, slaves, battles, betrayals, marriages and intrigue. The tale has adapted readily to the modern media age, spawning movies, TV shows, comic books and -- inevitably -- video games.
The latest entry comes from Perfect World PWRD, a Chinese creator of massive multiplayer online role-playing games, or MMOPRGs. "Chi Bi," named after a famous Three Kingdoms battle, was launched in open beta testing Jan. 25 and should be fully up and running by the end of this month. The timing is no accident since the game includes features of a big-budget John Woo movie about the battle due out this year.
Historical Setting
"Chi Bi" is Perfect World's first game in a historical setting, but not its first shrewd tie-in. Right now, its most-played game is "Zhu Xian," based on a popular Internet fantasy-adventure novel of the same name. Another popular game is "Legend of Martial Arts," based on a TV series. All this followed on its flagship game, "Perfect World," and its sequel "Perfect World 2."
That's a lot of games for a company that's only two years old. Analysts say it can take other game developers that long just to cook up one game, much less five of them. The key is its technology platform Angelica 3D Game Engine, which Perfect World uses as a base for all its games. By not starting from scratch, it can turn out new variations fast and cheap.
"It creates a manufacturing flow, like a studio," said Tian Hou, analyst with Pali Research. "Other companies put millions of dollars into their games, but Perfect World's (research and development) costs half a million. After they finish, they do the promotion, spending about $1.5 million. They can make it all back in one month of operations."
It helps that China -- and increasingly, the rest of the world -- seems to have a bottomless appetite for MMOPRGs. In the last month, Perfect World and its four rivals on the U.S. stock market -- The9 NCTY, Shanda Interactive SNDA, Giant Interactive GA and NetEase (NASDAQ:NTES) NTES -- all soundly beat analysts' views for the fourth quarter.
Perfect World said it had an average of 624,000 users online at any one time, up 153% from the year-ago quarter. Revenue jumped even more, better than tripling the prior year at $35.4 million. Overall, 2007 was the firm's first profitable year, racking up 92 cents a share.
Perfect World is still one of the smaller players in the MMOPRG business, but it plans to get bigger soon. The company has five other games in development and three more in the planning stages. Next behind "Chi Bi" is "Hot Dance Party," which is just now finishing its closed beta testing phase.
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