Dominant
China expands into premium games and IP
Premium games are no longer a JP/US/EU default. It resets competitive analysis, soft-power framing, and talent flows — while rising AAA costs, publicly acknowledged by studios, become the first real constraint.
What is original IP?
Original IP means a game built on characters and a world the studio created and owns itself, rather than one based on a movie, comic, or another company’s property. AAA is the industry’s informal term for its biggest-budget games, the ones made by hundreds of people over several years.
Live in
- CN
- Global
Where it stands
After Black Myth: Wukong made China's AAA case, studios moved from one-off proof to franchise construction. Game Science skipped a Wukong sequel for Black Myth: Zhong Kui, meaning that mythology is being treated as a catalog, not a hook. S-GAME, Everstone/NetEase and miHoYo ship parallel original IP. Beijing formalized it: gaming entered the 15th Five-Year Plan, and overseas revenue hit $12.37B in H1 2026, up 30%.
Further reading
The timeline, consequences and objections for this trend are not written yet. What it is and its reading list are above.