While Chinese versions of virtual world games are attracting corporate advertisers, they have not yet attracted as many players as was originally hoped. From Business Week:
Last November, Procter & Gamble’s (PG) Vidal Sassoon launched with much fanfare its first hair salon in China’s virtual world. There was even a virtual ribbon-cutting ceremony. But today the VS salon in HiPiHi, China’s oldest and largest virtual world (a simulated online environment where users adopt identities known as avatars), sits mostly empty save for the occasional visitor. “It’s a bit like the real world but not as many people,” says an avatar named Yi Feichen, who recently logged on to HiPiHi for the first time and then visited the VS salon. “This world feels like it has been destroyed before.”
There’s not yet a lot of life in HiPiHi or other Chinese virtual worlds. Three Chinese software companies have set up local answers to Second Life, the popular virtual world in the U.S., but they’re only just getting started trying to attract users. The earliest and largest, HiPiHi, just finished beta testing of its virtual world and opened it to the public on Apr. 18. Two other rivals, NovoKing and UOneNet, are still testing their virtual worlds to a closed group.
Relatively few Chinese enter these virtual worlds. With 48,000 registered users, HiPiHi is the largest of the three. NovoKing has 10,000 registered users while UOneNet has fewer than 1,000.
