Shanda (SNDA) announced that its leading online games, The Legend of Mir II and World of Legend, were respectively recognized as the most popular online game and the best domestic game in China in the 2004 Chinese Game Annual Forums sponsored by China Press and Publication Administration.
Meanwhile, Shanda's leadership position in online game industry has also been further recognized by Chinese government — the Ministry of Information Industry (or MII) and the China Press and Publication Administration (CPPA) with support for game development.
The MII sets aside a total of CNY500 million (approximately US $60 million) each year to support the development of the country's IT industries. Recently the MII announced the list of enterprises that won government funding this year and Shanda became the key enterprise to be given special support for online game software development.
The CPPA also launched the National Online Game Publication Project to boost development of domestic online games in 2004. Recently the CPPA announced that three internally developed online games of Shanda, including The Age and two other new titles, Three Kingdom and Magical Land, along with 18 other domestic titles, have been selected for the project.