You've probably never heard of RedAtoms, but millions of mobile users in China are already playing its three games that came out this year. One of them a joint venture with Disney, parent company of ABC7.
Palo Alto based GSR Ventures is one of its financial backers. The company's co-founder Richard Lim expects mobile gaming to surpass the $10 billion it generates in Japan, "If you add it all up -- $10 billion in Japan, $10 to $20 billion in China, $10 billion in the U.S., $10 billion in Europe, not counting the rest of the world, you might have something about the size of Google."
So that's why you see so much interest in this conference on China, sponsored by the Graduate School of Business at Stanford. Former U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman says China is fast becoming a nation of entrepreneurs. He said, "After meeting entrepreneurial group after entrepreneurial group, I walked away thinking, this is the power of China's tomorrow and when unleashed, there's no looking back."
Hollywood also has its sights focused on China now that there is a way to get around a strict quota system for foreign films.
"Coproduction films can be seen in China as a Chinese film so they bypass the quota, so that has really been a lot of emphasis right now," said Janet Yang with Janet Yang Productions.
Two prime examples are filmmaker James Cameron, who's going to do a 3D documentary with a Chinese partner about the history of Beijing, and Dreamworks Animation, which announced a joint venture with three Chinese media companies.
As enthusiastic as all these conference attendees are to do more business with China, there's always going to be a stumbling block, and one of the most important ones is piracy, which could plague both the gaming industry as well as Hollywood.
