Recently, Gamma Data and China Game Industry Research Institute released the "2022 epidemic during the research report on the development of enterprises", which shows that the domestic game market showed a downward trend during the 2022 new crown pneumonia epidemic. Among them, in March and April, the actual sales revenue of the game market amounted to 22.572 billion yuan and 22.99 billion yuan respectively, down 9.05% and 3.40% year-on-year.
In the domestic game market "ceiling" gradually appeared, "go to sea" has become a lot of game companies **** the same choice. The self-media person Ding Daoshi believes that the overseas market must be a breakthrough for game companies to realize performance growth.
"House economy" did not meet expectations
Time to dial back to two years ago, then, by the new Crown Pneumonia epidemic "house economy", the game market is in the growth trend, the user entertainment The demand for entertainment is amplified, the user scale continues to expand, the development of China's game market is strong, and mobile gaming has brought accelerated growth in actual sales revenue.
According to the "January to June 2020 China Game Industry Report", from January to June 2020, China's network game user scale of nearly 660 million people, the national game market actual sales revenue of 139.493 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 22.34%, the growth rate increased by 13.75 percentage points year on year, of which the actual sales revenue of the mobile game accounted for 75.04% of the total game market revenue. 75.04%.
In contrast, also affected by the new crown pneumonia epidemic, the game market in the first half of 2022 showed a different picture.
According to Gamma Data, China's game user scale dropped 0.04% year-on-year to 666.24 million in March. By April, the number dropped further to 665.94 million people, down 0.01% year-on-year.
Ding Daoshi believes that the impact of the new Crown Pneumonia epidemic, on the one hand, because the user's income is lower, which in turn reduces the consumption of digital products such as games; on the other hand, the networked office can not completely solve the whole process of game product production, the game's R & D is also required to team offline in order to better complete the work."
And in the "2022 epidemic during the state of enterprise development research report" included in the statistics of the 34 listed game companies, the proportion of net profit in the first quarter of the decline of more than 67%, and some companies and even revenue and net profit fell.
In fact, in recent years, as the demographic dividend disappears, China's game user scale growth has slowed down, and the game market competition is more intense.
According to GameLook, a game industry organization, the total number of version numbers has been decreasing for four consecutive years since 2018. Compared with the issuance of 1,405 game version numbers in 2020, the total number of version numbers in 2021 has decreased by 46.26%. As of now, in April and June 2022 there are only two batches*** 105 game version numbers approved.
In Liao Xuhua's view, the first half of the game industry revenue decline and the market's own problems and other factors related to the market, the market because the game industry has entered a critical period of transition, completely shifted from the flow of thinking to product thinking, relying on the quality of the product and innovation in order to survive, the process will continue to have a large number of "traditional factories" fell out of line. "The signal is that we have to accept that the game market will be in a low-growth phase."
Look overseas
"Going overseas should be the highest priority strategy for all Chinese game companies, which are leading the world in terms of experience in the development, distribution, and operation of handheld games; gamification, or the integration and innovation of gaming technology, means looking for industrial opportunities outside of gaming. Gamification, or the integration and innovation of game technology, is to look for opportunities in industries other than games, such as gamified marketing, gamified education, and the combination of games and healthcare," Liao said. Liao Xuhua further said.
According to the information previously released by market research organization Newzoo, it is expected that the global game market size will reach 218.7 billion U.S. dollars in 2024, with a CAGR (compound annual average growth rate) of 7.55% from 2021 to 2024, and the number of players in the global market will exceed 3.3 billion in 2024. The global game market player ARPU (ratio of revenue to active users) will maintain an upward trend. data from Newzoo shows that the global game market ARPU is expected to be $65.87 in 2024, an increase of 10.91% from 2021, with a CAGR of 3.51% from 2021 to 2024. It can be seen that, globally, the gaming market is still in the process of continuous expansion.
In addition, Ding Lei also mentioned that the overseas game market is not quite the same, in terms of user groups, terminals, themes and other aspects of different countries have obvious differences, but these differences will not be a huge challenge, NetEase has the ability to meet the game needs of users in different regions in a short period of time.
At present, companies such as Perfect World and Sanqihou Entertainment have clearly expanded their overseas game markets. Among them, Sanqihou Entertainment has mentioned in the 2021 interim report that the company will further give play to the first-mover advantage in the overseas market, relying on strong game research and development capabilities and localized marketing capabilities, and continuously expand the scale of overseas business.
Since the choice of game products in overseas markets varies, domestic game companies still need to adapt to local conditions when going overseas.
In addition, the above people also mentioned that, because the distribution of the game in overseas depends on the cooperation resources of overseas advertisers and operators, the current game companies will choose to set up in Hong Kong, Singapore and other places of cross-border data centers, or based on these cross-border data centers to provide cloud services, the maintenance and operation costs are higher.
Explore the new scene of the game
In the "SPARK 2022" Tencent game conference held on June 27, Tencent first exposure of the game technology cooperation series of projects, a variety of new games and cross-border applications.
In this regard, Liao Xuhua said: "This can be interpreted as Tencent games in the industry and their own search for greater social survival space, these application scenarios also belong to the gamification and integration of part of the innovation, short and medium term is difficult to contribute to the revenue and profit, but this is a direction worth exploring in the long term."
During the conference, Tencent's Senior Vice President Ma Xiaoyi appeared in the image of a high-fidelity digital person, who mentioned that the game is not an isolated development of the industry, and since its birth, it has always been driven by cutting-edge technology, **** born of the development of each other, and accumulated a series of unique technical capabilities. Along with the continuous progress of technology and the upgrading of understanding, the game will certainly be integrated into more economic development and social life, releasing greater technological power and richer value.
Unlike in the past, current games are not just about playing, they can be innovative applications that break existing understandings and forms, or they can be solutions to certain social propositions. Games are gradually transcending traditional narrow perceptions to become a "super digital scene" that creates new value and possibilities.
In Ding Daoshi's view, "This change is a choice based on Tencent's overall strategic adjustments, and at the same time, the current research and development of games is a process of integrating a variety of technologies, including cloud computing, VR, and other perceptual technologies. And these technologies can also be used in other areas outside the game. For example, the simulated driving courses offered by driving schools. In fact, the broader view is also a kind of game technology, game technology enhancement can also be applied in these areas.
In addition, Ding Daoshi believes that, as players' demand for game effects gradually increased, this invariably stimulated the development of cloud services, hardware equipment and other related industries. "Now Tencent's exploration in the field of meta-universe can complement and promote each other with games to explore some new scenes."