The Shenzhen-based online service provider has entered into an agreement to buy the game from the third-party online game developer with a one-time payment, disclosed sources familiar with the matter on October 12.
Tencent will pay millions of renminbi for the sparkling game, said a source citing an investment report unveiled by a Hong Kong-based securities firm last Friday. Currently, Happy Farm is available on several popular SNS like Kaixin.com, Facebook, and Renren.com.
However, such saying was not confirmed by either side later on the day. Five Minutes is not informed of the news, said Xu Cheng (transliterated), chief operating officer (COO) for the Shanghai-based company, noting that the company will make every deal public if possible. Tencent, on the other hand, declined to make a comment on the market hearsay.
Jin Naili, an analyst at Shanghai-headquartered iResearch Consulting Group, says that an acquisition of Happy Farm by Tencent is understandable, although possibility for the rumored deal is small. Tencent rolled out an online game similar to Crazy Racing on its own portal when the latter won favor of netizens throughout the country.
The user number of Happy Farm amounted to 100,000 at the end of 2008, just one month after the game came into the market. The active gamer number of Happy Farm hit 16 million in the country, tripling that of the global-acclaimed online game World of Warcraft, said Gao Shaofei (transliterated), chief executive officer (CEO) for Five Minutes, at an earlier interview.
Like most of its likes, Happy Farm takes charges from virtual equipment distribution. As much as CNY 8,000 were brought in for operators when the virtual equipment of chemical fertilizer was first launched. Five Minutes is expected to record around CNY 3 million in profit this year, predicted a market observer.
QQ Farm, a product similar to Happy Farm, is estimated to generate around CNY 50 million for Tencent each month, which will push Tencent sales revenue up by 3% in the third quarter of the year, according to a report unveiled by MainFirst Securities Hong Kong Ltd.
The number of QQ Farm users is likely to reach 100 million, although the game is undergoing an open beta test, said a Tencent executive.
(USD 1 = CNY 6.83)
