#gamesindustry #gaming | Adam Smart

We’ve spent 20 years attempting to crack China. Meanwhile, China has been cracking us.

Episode 3 of Smart & Wright is stay, and this week John Wright and I went fairly deep on China and why Chinese recreation firms are rising so rapidly within the West.

Some of the numbers are mad. Chinese publishers now account for 35% of gaming UA spend outdoors China. Chinese-developed video games generated $20.4bn abroad in 2025, and within the first half of 2026 alone that hit $12.4bn.

But the bit I discover way more attention-grabbing is why.

China has had years of free-to-play, stay ops, gacha, big UA budgets and insane ranges of competitors. They’ve acquired very, superb on the enterprise of video games. And now we’re seeing that have transfer past cellular and more and more into PC and console too.

Which led us to a barely uncomfortable query. Are Chinese firms changing into higher on the enterprise of video games than Western firms?

I believe there’s nonetheless a extremely attention-grabbing distinction. The West is extremely good on the artistic aspect. China has change into extremely good at execution. And once you have a look at what’s popping out of China proper now, that hole feels prefer it’s getting smaller.

Anyway, we someway managed to get from there to Japanese whisky, British cricket and tiddlywinks. So normal Smart & Wright actually.

Episode 3 is stay now. Let us know what you suppose, and maintain sending us questions for the subsequent one. The extra outlandish the higher.

#gamesindustry #gaming