NetEase CEO: I Want To Invest In Nintendo And Work Together With Them

NetEase, a Chinese Internet Technology company that dabbles in PC video games, email services, e-commerce, may have plans of working with Nintendo in the future.

Ding Lei, the CEO of NetEase, told Nikkei China that he hopes to invest in Nintendo and “jointly develop products” together in an alliance that may be similar to how Nintendo and DeNA work together to create Nintendo mobile apps.

He cited Niantic, Nintendo, and The Pokemon Company working together to create Pokemon GO as a successful example for NetEase to potentially follow in the future.

Check out Ding Lei’s full comments below (Google translated):

Overseas investment is mainly in game design. After all, the creativity of a company is limited. We are already one of the best mobile game development companies in the world. However, we must admit that the masters are in the private sector. There are many other countries that have done very well, such as Nintendo in Japan and so on. We very much hope that by investing in an alliance with them, we can jointly develop products.

We used to invest in a VR design company with an investment of 20 million US dollars. Then there will be some relatively large investment projects overseas, and the amount will certainly exceed 20 million US dollars. The investment in the future will certainly be greater than before. For investment in the game, foreign countries will be a little more than China. Foreign innovation is still very powerful. This must be acknowledged. I mentioned just now that the game that ranks second in Japan is the “Wildland Action” developed by our company. It is ranked first in paid items and second in download volume. Wilderness Action is also ranked first in Taiwan. So I would like to say that China’s Internet companies are constantly making efforts in innovation. We couldn’t do this five years ago and now we are starting to do it. Of course, it is now ranked first. It may only be a month or two months. I hope that we will be the first in the future. We have the world’s top resolution in the future.

The world is flat. I don’t see domestic and foreign competitors as competitors because everyone is a friend. China has a large market and also has its own advantages. Foreign countries have the advantage of game design. For example, two years ago, there was a game called Pokemon Go. Pokemon was an IP of a Japanese company, but U.S. companies made Pokemon a VR game and had a very successful global distribution. So many of the game’s R&D will be done together by multiple companies. Including in China there is a very successful game “Onmyoji”, which is the traditional Japanese IP. Since then, we have jointly developed some works with many traditional Japanese animation characters and have also been very successful. Therefore, as a game company, we regard game development companies all over the world as friends and cooperate and develop together. We also have many experiences and advantages.

In addition to games, we are still working with manufacturers overseas to provide goods for our selection. For example, in Japan, companies that provide instant noodles and facial masks provide products for us in the UK, Italy, and France. This is the use of traditional manufacturing to provide products for us. We also have in Taiwan, such as Ma Yushan’s sesame paste, and other snacks. We are their biggest buyers.