The madness approaches: ChinaJoy trade show will draw 250K gamers to Shanghai

I’m headed to ChinaJoy 2015, the giant game trade show in Shanghai early next week. It’s going to be hot and crowded and fascinating.

ChinaJoy 2015 is expected to draw another 250,000 attendees to the gigantic exposition center in Shanghai, where there are more than 100,000 square meters of exhibit space. By comparison, the biggest American video game trade show, the  Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), drew 52,000 people to Los Angeles in June. As you might expect, China does everything big.

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Last year, China’s mobile game market grew 93 percent to $2.9 billion, according to market researcher Niko Partners. In 2015, market researcher Newzoo estimates China will grow 23 percent to $22 billion across all sectors of games. That rate of growth compares to just 9 percent for the overall game business. And for China, that’s kind of a slump. Growth has slowed this year with instability among Chinese stock prices.

But Tencent has become the world’s biggest gaming company, and there are plenty of publicly traded gaming companies that are making their mark, including iDreamsky in mobile games and Perfect World in PC online, console, and mobile role-playing games. Big Western players such as Kabam and Supercell are investing heavily in the Chinese market. At places like the Kerry Hotel in Shanghai, the lobby is filled with deal makers from all over the world. Hopefully, I’ll be interviewing them.

Chinese game companies are still getting funded, and big game companies are making investments and acquisitions. As such, they’re keeping the wheels of the game industry moving as more mature markets slow down. I’m hoping to interview various industry leaders and get a good tour of the games and people at the event.

The show floor has exhibits that are full of scantily clad models, known as booth babes. But hopefully we’ll bring you more insight about the different sectors of games, such as multiplayer online battle arena games on the PC or home-grown role-playing games on Microsoft’s Xbox One and Sony’s PlayStation 4. Those consoles are off to a slow start, but China still has plenty of growth in its online and mobile segments.

Look for posts during and after the show, so long as the jet lag doesn’t kill me.

Disclosure: The organizers of ChinaJoy at Howell Expo are paying my way to China. Our coverage remains objective.