CDC Announces Japan Expansion, New International President

Chinese MMO company CDC Games has been making news lately because of its legal battles with Mgame over security and tech support for Yulgang, but now the company has some brighter news to report, as it announces its entry into the Japanese online game market with the establishment of CDC Games Japan. CDC Games Japan will be a subsidiary of CDC Games International, and will kick off with the beginning of closed beta testing for its new action MMO Minna de Battle (known as Gemfighter outside of Japan). The company says the Japanese launch is part of an international expansion strategy, which includes the recent launch of U.S. Operations with CDC Games USA. CDC also claims five sub-licensing agreements for the Southeast Asia and Taiwan regions, and has made several large MMOs available in Asia, including Yulgang, EVE Online, Special Force, Shaiya and Mir III, with The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar, Dragonsky, Stone Age 2, ChaosGem, Come on Baby, and Red Blood all planned for Chinese launch in the near future. Additionally, the company also announced the appointment of Jeffrey Longoria as president of CDC International, moving over from CDC Software, a sister company in the CDC family, where he served as senior vice president of strategic alliances, most notably working on the strategic relationship with Microsoft for CDC Software, CDC Games and other companies in the CDC family. Said Longoria of the Minna de Battle launch, “We are very excited to launch our first online game in Japan. Along with our recent launch of our U.S. operations, our plans to offer five new games for southeast Asia and Taiwan and our strong games pipeline, we are positioning ourselves to become one of the leading global online games companies with a broad and diversified international games portfolio.” [The preceding article originally ran at Gamasutra sister site Worlds in Motion.]