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The downward trend of the game industry is still continuing. Recently, gamma data released its third quarter report, showing that from July to September 2022, the actual sales revenue of China's game market was 59.703 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 12.61% month-on-month and 19.13% year-on-year. When the game industry was "cold" moving forward, some leading companies sensed the market trend two or three years ago and looked for "another driftwood" in the mobile game wave - console games.
In this regard, companies have shown different layout ideas: Tencent , NetEase and others have set up studios to enter the 3A game (high cost, high volume, high quality) production; Mihayou 's " Genshin Impact " logs into PS5, and reversely surrounds the host market through "one game, multiple terminals". Some industry insiders said that no matter what the carrier is, game manufacturers will compete for in the future, both high-quality games and games going overseas. They should increase R&D investment to enable domestic games to transform from global leading revenue to technology and experience to enter the forefront of the world.
■New Kuaibao reporter Liang Ruxin
established a 3A game studio to compete for market opportunities
console game, also known as a TV game, including handheld game and home game. Unlike mobile games, domestic console games have been in a tepid state for a long time under the influence of multiple factors such as policy restrictions and changes in the game industry structure. The "2021 China Game Industry Report" released by the Game Working Committee of the China Audio and Digital Association, the actual sales revenue of the Chinese game market in 2021 was 296.513 billion yuan. The number of users in the mobile game market reached 656 million, and the actual sales revenue reached 225.538 billion yuan, accounting for 76.06% of the overall market revenue. According to statistics from market research firm Niko Partners, China has 13.2 million console gamers in 2021. Compared with the 656 million mobile game users, the user scale of console games is almost negligible.
However, many industry insiders still have hope for console games, believing that "console games will be the next new growth point in the game industry." The trend report released by Gamma Data at the end of 2021 also pointed out that high-quality console games are in line with the long-term development direction of the game industry and are the main reason for their development potential; coupled with the differentiated characteristics of the Chinese market, the potential in this field has also been strengthened. "In 2021, China's console game market grew by more than 20%, but due to the overall scale, the market has not yet ushered in an explosive stage, and companies still have more opportunities to make arrangements."
During this layout process, leading companies such as Tencent and NetEase have all adopted the "buy, buy, buy" strategy overseas to lay the foundation for entering the console market. Taking Tencent as an example, the company's two studio groups, Tianmei and Photon, have been constantly "recruiting" overseas for the past two or three years. They not only absorbed 3A game production talents such as " Far Cry 5", " War Machine ", and "Assassin's Creed", but also tried the waters of console games such as "Code Name: SYN", " Pokémon Assembly ", and "Successful Case".
In June this year, Tencent Senior Vice President Ma Xiaoyi revealed, "Although the growth of the mobile game market is relatively strong, the PC and console side are still the best platform to create a new gameplay or IP. At present, our team mainly engaged in PC and console games overseas has more than 3,000 people. They will continue to try to add new gameplay to 3A quality PC and console games to help us achieve greater breakthroughs."
NetEase has also repeatedly told the outside world that in addition to mobile games, NetEase's development focus will be on PC and console games, and will focus on overseas markets. It is reported that NetEase established Sakura Studio in Japan in July 2020, mainly responsible for the development of console games. There are currently three projects under development, including adventure action RPG (role play), popular game series new battle games, and original IP action games.
In addition, including Mihayou's "Genshin Impact", more and more domestic games are gradually increasing on console platforms.For example, Sony launched the "China Star Plan" in 2017, supporting the release of a number of domestic game projects such as "Shadow Torch City" and "Hardcore Mecha" on the PlayStation console.
manufacturers look for angles and try to adapt to the rhythm of domestic and foreign markets
market research agency
market research agency
market research agency released this year, showing that by 2025, the total hardware and software revenue of China's console game market is expected to reach US$2.46 billion. From 2020 to 2025, the annual compound growth rate of China's console game market is about 5.9%. It is worth mentioning that at present, the domestic and foreign console game markets are showing completely different development trends. In the development of relatively mature overseas markets, the hardware barriers of the console game market are high. At the same time, the game business of the "Yu Sanjia" hosts such as Sony, Nintendo , Microsoft , etc. have all declined to varying degrees. In order to seek new growth points, these companies have focused more on PC games, independent games, e-sports and virtual entertainment in recent years, and the trend of industrial transformation is obvious.
In the domestic market, the console game market is in an early stage of development and shows an upward growth trend, but its market share still accounts for only a small part of the overall game market. Especially in the context of the total control of version number , it is becoming increasingly difficult for console games to release greater market potential. According to incomplete statistics from Xin Kuaibao reporters, from 2020 to September 2022, the number of game companies approved for more than 2,400, while there were only more than 20 console games.
has an industry view that seeking new opportunities after the upgrade and iteration of the host industry will be the focus of the current manufacturer's layout. So for manufacturers, how should they adapt to the rhythm and changes of different markets at home and abroad? Game industry analyst Zhang Shule told Xin Kuaibao reporter that when it comes to the overseas console game market, companies such as Tencent and NetEase mainly rely on consoles to build games, but the console games themselves are of high standards. Domestic manufacturers' game production thinking such as "krypton gold" and "harm liver" are often too eager for quick success and it is difficult to truly create a 3A masterpiece. Although acquisitions of overseas companies are a shortcut to entering the console game market, the improvement of its own R&D and operation capabilities is limited. In China, manufacturers often choose to become agents of game consoles to strengthen in-depth cooperation with game console manufacturers. Due to the influence of multiple internal and external factors, console games perform weakly in the Chinese market and are difficult to change in a short period of time. At this stage, manufacturers are mostly incubated to meet the needs of vertical and niche hardcore console players.
In his opinion, in the future, no matter what the carrier is, the competition points for game manufacturers will be in the two aspects of high-quality games and going overseas. The top priority of manufacturers should focus more on the unique gaming trends such as cloud game , meta-universe games (VR, AR), and invest R&D capabilities in the creation of domestic 3A masterpieces, so that domestic games can transform from global leading revenue to technology and experience to enter the forefront of the world.
