Large crowds flock to China Joy

The 2020 China Digital Entertainment Expo and Conference, or China Joy, kicked off in Shanghai on Friday, with large crowds demonstrating how avid gamers are undeterred by the series of health checks at the entrance.

Covering 130,000 square meters, this year's four-day expo will showcase the latest games and devices from more than 400 companies, including industry bigwigs such as Tencent, NetEast and Ubisoft.

Cloud gaming, which uses cloud servers rather than local devices to run games, is one of the highlights of this year's show. Companies such as Shengqu Information Technology (Shanghai) Co Ltd, Hangzhou Shunwang Technology Co Ltd and tech giant Qualcomm will release their cloud computing products at the expo.

In light of the pandemic, China Joy has for the first time rolled out an online exhibition by teaming up with video-sharing platforms such as TikTok and Kuaishou, allowing gamers to experience the event remotely.

According to the China Game Industry Report released by the China Audio-video and Digital Publishing Association on Thursday, the country's cloud gaming sector saw its value surge by 79.35 percent during the first six months of the year, with total sales revenue reaching 403 million yuan ($57.7 million).

Zhang Yijun, a member of the China Audio-video and Digital Publishing Association, said that the commercial launch of 5G technology and the optimization of the broadband environment have helped boost the growth of the cloud gaming sector.