Do you all have mobile phones? —— 2018 Blizzard Carnival
"The largest gaming platform on the earth is the mobile phone," Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft Xbox business, said in an interview with Bloomberg that 1.5 billion people around the world play games on mobile phones, but Microsoft lacks a native mobile platform and does not have much creative ability to make popular mobile games. Acquisition of Activision Blizzard is a key step for Microsoft to enter the mobile game market.
Microsoft's ambition is not just about making money through mobile games.
According to The Verge, British regulator CMA is investigating Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard for US$68.7 billion. Microsoft stated in a recent filing to CMA:
Acquisition of Activision Blizzard will improve Microsoft's ability to create the next-generation game store. After taking down Activision Blizzard's content (IP), the game store will operate on a series of devices, including mobile devices. Building on Activision Blizzard’s existing player community, the Xbox Store will expand to mobile platforms to attract players to use the new Xbox mobile platform.
Microsoft also considered the difficulty of transferring mobile phone users from Google Play and AppStore to Xbox mobile platform. On the one hand, it tried to attract developers with the help of "0 commission", and on the other hand, it hoped to provide well-known and popular content to make players more inclined to try new platforms - in addition to its own "Minecraft", the ones that can be relied on most are Activision Blizzard's "Candy Legend", "Call of Duty Mobile Games" and "Diablo: Immortal". According to Sensor Twoer data, Diablo: Immortal has earned over US$100 million in the global mobile game market in just 8 weeks (not included in the national server), second only to Pokemon GO's historical record of 2 weeks of exceeding 100 million.
"Diablo: Immortal" has exceeded 100 million revenues and is second only to "Pokemon GO". Image from: SensorTower
The importance of the successful acquisition of Activision Blizzard to Microsoft is evident. But spending $68.7 billion at Microsoft — Activision Blizzard’s record annual revenue 7.8 times the mobile gaming market, with a larger background being the collective turn of the console gaming industry.
is moving towards mobile games
On August 29, Sony announced without warning that it would acquire the game studio Savage Game Studio and establish a new mobile department on this basis. This department will be independent of the existing console game department and focus on making mobile 3A-level games based on existing or brand new PlayStation IP.
This is an important bet for Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) to the mobile game market. FGO released by Aniplx, a subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment (SMEJ), has long been greatly successful in the mobile game market, and once contributed nearly two-thirds of its revenue to B station.
Fate Grand Order, picture from: FGO
Earlier, SIE President Jim Ryan also said at the business briefing that by fiscal year 2025, half of the games Sony will release each year will be logged on to PC and mobile devices.
is not just Sony. EA acquired Glu Mobile for US$2.1 billion last year, trying to gain the game operation capabilities of mobile phones, the world's largest gaming platform. In May this year, EA launched "APEX Mobile Game", swept the number one in the iOS free list in 71 countries and regions in one fell swoop. In addition, there are many game manufacturers including Ubisoft and Square Enix. They are more proactive in participating in the mobile game market than in the past, but when it comes to game manufacturers, they will definitely not be able to avoid the Nintendo of Yusan.
Nintendo's starting point for entering the mobile game industry is the famous "Pokemon GO". In 2016, Nintendo and Pokémon joined hands with Niantic, which was independent from Google, to launch "Pokemon GO" and achieved great success, creating multiple gaming industry records.
After that, Nintendo has successively launched " Super Mario Cool Run ", "Flame Emblem: Heroes", "Animal Forest: Pocket Camp", " Lost Dragon Affair ", "Doctor Mario World" and "Mario Kart: Tour". Among them, the buyout "Super Mario Cool Run" has downloaded as much as 227.2 million yuan, and "Flame Emblem: Hero"'s revenue reached the $1 billion mark in June this year.
Nintendo mobile game revenue, picture from: SensorTower
But "The Lost Dragon" has become an abandoned child, as a key product jointly launched by Nintendo and Cygames. 2019 Wall Street Journal article reported that Nintendo did not want players to over-consuming, and an executive of Cygames' parent company CyberAgent complained:
Nintendo is not interested in getting a lot of income from a smartphone game. If we manage this project alone, we will make more.
Nintendo's persistence is not only inseparable from the historic success of Switch on mobile gaming devices. However, this is not only not the guiding light of the game console, but also makes the future look even more bleak.
The end of Moore's Law , the end of the console industry
Although Nintendo has not publicly admitted it, Swicth can basically be regarded as a handheld console, a mobile gaming device. The success of Steam Deck, the newly launched cloud game handheld consoles of Tencent and Logichi , and the widespread cross-platform development and gameplay seem to reveal a new possibility for gaming devices. But these have nothing to do with the game console.
Since 1972, every generation replacement of game consoles has been a revolutionary evolution of console performance and picture quality. The most intuitive thing is the changes in the fourth generation of games from PS1 to PS4. Today in the ninth generation, players complain and developers complain that the core chip provider once again warned everyone:
Moore's Law is dead.
9 At the end of September, Nvidia released the RTX 40 series. The soaring price became one of the most concerned points of the outside world. When asked about their opinions on price increases, Nvidia CEO Huang Renxun said to get used to it, "Moore's Law is dead." As early as 2017, he said publicly that this judgment has also been increasingly recognized.
A16 Compared with A13, picture from: Apple
Even though it is the latest A16 chip of Apple , the CPU performance has only improved by about 40% compared to A13 3 years ago, and the performance of GPU has almost no progress compared to previous generations. The development of chips is obviously slowing down, and behind it is the last difficulty facing Moore's Law - the development of chip manufacturing processes is about to hit the ceiling of the physical limit. 3nm is already in front of us, but 1nm is still at the stage of "promising breakthrough".
There are not many people who can face optimistically. Even TSMC founder Zhang Zhongmou can only hope:
"There is no way out at the end of the road, and there is another village in the dark."
When the room for improving game performance and picture becomes limited, more and more games choose to log in across platforms, how should game consoles convince players to buy expensive host devices? However, even if the fate of the game console cannot be saved, the game software will still be the future.
Nintendo and Microsoft's strategy is very clear, the former chose Swicth, and the latter chose Game Pass game subscription. As the biggest winner of the previous generation, Sony was the most tangled and passive, but under pressure from Microsoft and the outside world, it launched a subscription system and unbinding the first-party games from the console.
Just as Nintendo President Shuntaro Hasegawa said at the beginning of his tenure, "The core of the business may no longer be home game consoles." Games are still games, but PCs, mobile phones and even new devices will become a wider choice.
The vast world is
In that press release to acquire Savage Game Studio, Sony revealed that the studio is developing an unannounced 3A-level continuous operational action mobile game, which is hard not to remind people of " Genshin Impact ".
The success of "Genshin Impact" on a global scale is an impact on the entire game industry. With high investment and high quality (mobile games), 3A-level mobile games have also become a success. Mobile game manufacturers try to replicate the success of "Genshin Impact" to a certain extent. Traditional game manufacturers have to be jealous of the cost and income of developing 3A games themselves.
Picture from: SensorTower
The "Lost Dragon Fate" mentioned above actually exceeded US$100 million with its investment and quality in the 3A-level category, and it quickly became an abandoned child due to its different concepts between Nintendo and Cygames and the emergence of "Horse Racing Girl".
It is more convincing that Activision Blizzard's transformation may be. According to Activision Blizzard's second-quarter financial report this year, more than $800 million of revenue from mobile games is than the combined console and PC platforms during the same period. At the same time, the market results of Diablo Immortal, which was launched this year are obvious to all. King (Candy Legend) acquired in 2015 generated more than $1 billion in revenue in 2021, in addition to the paid revenue announced by Call of Duty Mobile, as well as the Call of Duty Mobile, which is scheduled to be officially launched next year.
According to the 2022 Global Game Market Report released by Newzoo, the global game market size is expected to reach US$196.8 billion this year, of which the mobile game market accounted for 53%, and increased by 5.1% year-on-year to US$103.5 billion.
Image from: Newzoo
On one hand, there is a game console that doesn’t know if there is a future, and on the other hand, there is a huge and growing mobile market. It goes without saying which one has a better future. Today, when GaaS (service is game), cross-platform, and mobile have become "elephants in the room", the collective turn of traditional game manufacturers is also necessary to seize the critical window period.
Tencent Senior Vice President Ma Xiaoyi mentioned in an internal sharing that most of the best game IPs and gameplays currently come from PC and Console (game console) platforms. In the context of European and American major companies actively embracing GaaS and mobile games, (Tencent) must not only seize this opportunity, but also learn from these top teams, because as time goes by, these major companies will start to do the Internet and mobile games by themselves.
Whether it is Microsoft, Sony, EA, and Activision Blizzard, they are not lacking in the technology and experience of making high-quality games. However, the switching of the platform not only means changes in the interactive interface, but also tests the development and operation capabilities of game manufacturers on mobile phone platforms. This also requires those game manufacturers who are heading to mobile phones to seize the window to learn.
Is the more advantageous one, or the cross-river dragon? This is a new game.
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