Report: Asian games industry still fuelled by Internet cafe culture

Tuesday, 22nd March 2011 21:43 GMT By Brenna Hillier


According to Gamasutra, a new report details over 350,000 Internet cafes throughout Asia.

In Korea, 82 percent of homes have a computer in them, but Internet cafes are are still wildly popular for players of MMOs like Aion – even though they’re more expensive than those in China, India and Vietnam, where prices range up to $1 per hour. So much for MMOs keeping you cooped up at home.

Indian gamers play a range of international titles, while their Vietnamese counterparts enjoy locally produced games.

In China, Tencent is the most popular online games provider. Government policies require Internet cafes to operate as chains of 30 or more outlets. The resulting “cafes” can be 200 terminals strong and 9,000 square feet in size.

Pearl Research is a San Francisco-based firm offering market reports and consulting on the interactive industries and Internet business.

Image: AP/Greg Baker.



  1. LOLshock94

    all hail the great the greater….Kim Jon Il

    #1 4 years ago
  2. Toastrules

    Completely true, although I do find it a little bit sad that the rest of the world doesn’t know about this.

    I visited the PI a few months ago, and everybody ALWAYS goes to the internet cafes. Problem is, they’re about as clean and fragrant as a locker room. But the people are too poor to afford internet, and actual gaming computers so..

    I was actually kind of surprised. The computers they had there were pretty good, and there were like 20 of them. They all had 4 GBs of RAM, with {probably pirated) Windows 7 x64 and Radeon 9800GTs. The processors were Quad Core 2.8 GHz as well, it was really surprising how people pay literally 10c an hour to play at these machines, yet the actual cafe can afford expensive ones like these.

    #2 4 years ago
  3. xino

    what is so bad about this?

    it’s good man! they are so passionate about gaming that they’ll go to the internet cafe playing them!

    that’s spirit right there!

    #3 4 years ago

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