VietNamNet Bridge - Vietnam is a very promising market for game developers but Japanese games remain unpopular in Vietnam for a variety of reasons.

Even so, 15 Japanese game firms arrived in Vietnam last week to seek cooperation opportunities with Vietnamese businesses to exploit the market.

Ranking sixth in Asia with annual turnover of $237 million, Vietnam’s digital content and mobile game market has been eyed by Japanese firms, which are trying to seek opportunities in Europe and Vietnam.

The representative from JOGA, the Japanese online game association, said that he finds the Vietnamese market very attractive. 

He first came to Vietnam to learn about the market in 2008 and returned two years later, when he realized the demand had increased by twofold.

Bui Huy Son, head of the Trade Promotion Center, said there are favorable conditions for Japanese and Vietnamese firms to cooperate to develop the game market, because Japan has many partnership agreements with Vietnam. 

Meanwhile, Japan is Vietnam’s second biggest investment and trade partner in the digital content industry.

Nguyen Viet Khanh, director of iValues Center of Viet Software JSC, a distributor of mobile games, said that Japanese games have attractive content and good images, and would be favored in Vietnam. 

Some Japanese games on Apple Store have had millions of downloads after one or two months.

Khanh said he was considering buying Japanese mobile games that he would adapt to Vietnamese tastes for domestic distribution.

Some analysts, asked about the prospect of cooperation between Vietnamese and Japanese businesses, said the current conditions are favorable. 

The cooperation between Japanese DeNA and Vietnamese VNG, the largest distributor in Vietnam, has been stable over many years.

However, though seeing the favorable conditions for cooperation, analysts noted that Vietnamese firms still don’t know how they should start the cooperation.

A senior executive at a large game firm said the taste and habits of Vietnamese and Japanese gamers are different.

“I can see big differences in the way of playing, types of games and behaviors between the games favored by Vietnamese and Japanese gamers,” he said. “This is the reason why many Japanese games firms have failed to penetrate the Vietnamese market.”

“Vietnamese game firms, which remain small and weak, still don’t have the power to guide the market,” he continued. “They would rather rely on Chinese games than pioneer a new trend.”

He said that even if these problems could be settled, Japanese games would still meet obstacles when penetrating Vietnam.

“Vietnamese are used to play uncopyrighted games. This is unacceptable for Japanese firms,” he said.

Thanh Mai