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Published on July 31, 2007

Chanin Wanijwongse, chief marketing officer of CyberPlanet Group, said the company's goal was to be recognised as an international game-console developer and this was the first year for this new direction.

The company has long been an authorised game-developer, having three main console-game development licences - Nintendo DS, Sony's Play Station II, and the Nintendo Wii. The company has completed the development of 12 game titles for Nintendo DS, 10 titles for Sony's Play Station II and another 12 for Nintendo Wii. All the games will be distributed throughout the global market through its five international game-publishers in the last quarter of this year.

Chanin said this was a turning point for the company as after several years learning the business of being a PC game and mobile-game developer it had found there was limited room for growth of the business. In the last two years, the company put on hold the development of PC and mobile games and turned to develop console games instead. During that time the company applied for licences from the large console-game providers and this year received licences from three  console-game suppliers.

"Around the world there are several million game devices for three types of games - Nintendo DS, Sony's Play Station II and Nintendo Wii - and these represent opportunities for us," said Chanin.

The company expects to gain more revenue from the global market. In this, the first year, solid revenue from the global market will be at least 30 per cent of projected total revenue of Bt100 million before jumping to Bt160 million in 2008, of which 70 per cent will come from the global market.

"For the local market, we hope to maintain growth of 20 to 30 per cent annually. We expect a lot from the global market. We will use Thailand as a manufacturing centre and export worldwide. We wish to see our products embedded with the 'Made in Thailand' label distributed internationally. My dream is to see CyberPlanet as an international company with many representative offices around the world," said Chanin.

The business plan is to set up a representative office in San Francisco in the second quarter of next year, then  in London in 2009 and in Tokyo a year later. "Our target markets are the US and Europe, which are big markets for console games," said Chanin.

After its first batch of 34 game titles scheduled for launch between the last quarter of this year and the middle of next year, it plans to release 10 more in the second half next year.

"We have realised that if we want to succeed in the game-development business we have to catch the right market, and that is console games. Console games are the largest portion of the total global game market - around 60 to 70 per cent - while PC and mobile games are only 30 to 40 per cent of the market," said Chanin.

Market competition is another factor Chanin has considered. He said PC and mobile games were an open market where any company could jump in and compete. It's different from console games, which were a closed market because developers needed to have a licence for development and that took time. Therefore in this market there are fewer competitors than in the PC and mobile-game market.

"Even though CyberPlanet itself had quite a solid profile in game development, it took us two years to achieve authorisation. The first step is quite difficult but the rest is easier. We want to see more local game developers walk the same path," said Chanin. He said target customers for PC and mobile games were hardcore gamers, who were fewer in number than target customers for console games which had a much larger market size.

"The character of console games is casual and the trend of playing games around the world is moving to become a part of people's lifestyle."

Asina Pornwasin

The Nation