So far in this year, 4 online game companies in China IPOed in HKSE, Nasdaq and NYSE, several other online game companies such as 9You and OurGame are on their way for IPO, 2007 is a milestone for the Chinese online game industry.

Below is a table of the 4 online game companies that IPOed in 2007 so far.

After Shanda and The9 were listed on Nasdaq almost 3 years ago, the capital market keep a little bit quite on China online game industry. Below is a table of those Chinese online game companies which were IPOed 3 years ago or even earlier.

It's Shanda who changed the business model to "free-to-play, pay for virtual merchandise", making itself an online game operator, Shanda worked with online game content providers and hosting dozens of online games.

However, in this high-growth market, Shanda and Netease failed to deliver new games fast enough, this made space for new comers like Perfect World and Giant. And the venture capital increased their investment in online game more and more, in 2005 only 3 online game companies got investment from venture capital, in 2006 the number grew to 5 and the total amount is $21M, in 2007 so far about $80M has been invested in this area. "free-to-play, pay for virtual merchandise" is common in China online game market, according to iResearch, from 2007 to 2010 the online game virtual merchandise trade will keep growing at 30% YOY.

As I can remember, this kind of prosperity happened in Mobile Service Provider several years before, lots of money invested and a bunch of SPs listed in Nasdaq. But after the government strengthened the controlling, those SPs such as Tom and KongZhong suffer a lot. Hope this won't happen in the Chinese online game market.