China is set to become the world’s largest market for games and the Taiwanese government should therefore include the industry in this year’s negotiations on the trade pact between the two nations, according to Aaron Hsu, chairman of XPEC Entertainment and president of the Game Industry Promotion Alliance (GIPA) of Taiwan.

If the games industry is not covered by the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA), he warned, Chinese game companies will be able to easily enter the Taiwan market while Taiwanese games have to go through a complicated examination system before becoming available in China.

Hsu said that currently Chinese companies can directly operate Web games in Taiwan without passing special examination procedures. However, Taiwanese companies cannot directly operate games in China.

He also pointed out that in 2011 China-made products accounted for half of the new games released in Taiwan. In contrast, Taiwanese products constituted less than one percent of the new games released in China.

Hsu predicted that if the ECFA negotiations lead to China allowing Taiwanese companies to directly enter the Chinese game market, more international game companies will also use Taiwan as a stepping stone to its larger neighbour.

XPEC Entertainment has a Web game development and production centre in Beijing as well as an art production base in Suzhou, and also holds a 40 percent stake in Beijing TKgame.

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