Since the release of the last batch of editions on July 22, 2021, the game circle has once again fallen into the predicament of "no rice cooker". So, in the current situation, how should gamers plan for 2022? During the Spring Festival, the mobile game matrix viewed the plans of many big manufacturers such as Tencent, NetEase, Perfect, Heartbeat, etc., including financial report meetings, internal letters, answering investors' questions and many other channels.
So, what kind of arrangements do game manufacturers that have experienced the suspension of the version number and are facing business transformation have in their future business planning? Where will China's gaming industry go? What kind of mentality should we use to face the new year?
2022 to go to sea, is it still too late?
This is probably one of the biggest concerns for many vendors. Although there has been a suspension of the version number, after that time, not all manufacturers have set their sights on overseas, so there are still many manufacturers who have not chosen overseas markets, or regard overseas markets as not so important. However, in 2021, there will be another suspension of the version number, and no one can guarantee that this will be the last time, so from the perspective of the future, going to sea is no longer a company's "growth curve", but has become a mandatory topic. So, the problem arises. Will it be too late to go to sea in 2022? Where to go out to sea?
From the talent war of domestic manufacturers such as Tencent, NetEase, and Mihayou in Montreal in the second half of 2021, it can be seen that there are still opportunities to go to sea in 2022, in fact, more simply, when a road is blocked, there is already the determination to smash the pot and sell iron, why can't you go overseas? Including Gigabit's extraordinary shareholders' meeting held in January 2022, Lu Zhuyan, chairman of Gigabit, said, "In addition to reserve IP, only global themes can be established, which is a mandatory requirement." It can be seen that to go global, game companies are imperative. So, how should we look at the next overseas market?
At the beginning of January, the mobile game matrix had written an article "2021 Overseas Inventory: Under the Wave of Globalization, the Leading Edge of Domestic Mobile Games Has Been Further Opened", in which the data mentioned that the revenue of China's overseas mobile games in overseas markets reached 18.013 billion US dollars, an increase of 2.563 billion US dollars over 2020, an increase of 16.59% year-on-year. In addition, in the "2021 Annual Inventory of Chinese Mobile Games Overseas" released by Sensor Tower, a total of 42 Chinese mobile games in overseas markets will have revenues of more than 100 million US dollars in overseas markets in 2021, further increasing by 5 on the basis of 2020. One thing that these data illustrates is that in the post-epidemic era, The revenue of Chinese game manufacturers overseas has maintained steady growth. In recent years, Chinese game manufacturers continue to develop products for overseas markets, localized operations and in-depth exploration of overseas markets, many manufacturers have very rich experience in overseas markets they are familiar with, if Chinese game manufacturers can summarize the publishing experience of various regions of the world, then one of the things that Chinese manufacturers have to do is to continue to promote smart phones, because this will bring further demographic dividend growth in the global market.
Nowadays, in addition to Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, the Southeast Asian market may be the first stop generally chosen by Chinese game manufacturers, after all, the culture of these countries and regions is the closest to Chinese culture, and the difficulty is relatively small. The second is the Asian market, especially the Japanese and Korean markets, the early domestic game types, gameplay styles are referred to these two markets, so with the Chinese game products in the art, content, theme and gameplay of the step by step exploration and breakthrough, domestic games have long been into these two markets. Finally, there is the most diversified and challenging European and American markets. In addition to these mature markets, there are many emerging markets that are also worth paying attention to, such as Russia and Turkey, according to the Sensor Tower report, the Turkish mobile game market has grown rapidly in revenue in recent years, and by 2021, it has become the seventh largest market for China's overseas mobile games. As of November 2021, Turkey's App Store and Google Play total revenue exceeded $55 million, 2.5 times the same period in 2019 and equivalent to revenues in Brazil and Chile combined. Some people even said that the performance of Chinese mobile games in these emerging markets can be called "dimensionality reduction blows", and similarly, there are more emerging markets that deserve our attention, such as more Eastern European markets and the growing European and American markets.
Therefore, in 2022, we predict that in addition to more manufacturers have the need to go to sea, domestic issuers will also face more overseas markets, so when you choose, you need to carefully identify, this region is not suitable for my products? How do I localize my product?
If you are transforming, where is the way out?
Because of the suspension of the version number, many teams cannot sustain themselves and face dissolution or transformation. If you are transforming, there are many directions to look at, for example, 2022 will be a big year for e-sports, can you transform e-sports? For example, the emergence of a series of new concepts of metacosmity and NFT can not be considered in this direction? There are many ideas, and we can't guess everyone's ideas one by one, but we can only explain the future direction they think will be as much as possible from the speeches we have collected from the big guys.
First of all, let's talk about the boiling layoffs of various large factories such as perfect and heartbeat, the large-scale personnel adjustment of the game-based industry such as perfection and heartbeat does reveal some problems in the current domestic game industry, in simple terms, it is because the suspension of the version number makes some non-main projects cut, this situation does not only happen to perfect and heartbeat, and then, these two have also issued some voices, to the effect that the streamlined personnel will be concentrated in their own more good and the direction of greater market demand, This is also very much in line with the strategic planning of conventional enterprises - open source throttling. Throttling is done, so where is the direction of open source?
For example, in the e-sports industry, the idea of making products is certainly unrealistic, not to mention the version number, more is at the top of the best-seller list with e-sports attributes of the product is not a good stubble, so want to product confrontation, is not a good idea. However, in addition to products, such as the industrial chain of e-sports, it seems that there is a market with a lot of space in the future. On the one hand, Tencent's four perennial top 10 best-seller products "Glory of the King", "Peace Elite", "League of Legends Mobile Game" and "Battle of the Golden Shovel" all have very strong e-sports attributes, so it is destined that the future market will have a strong demand for e-sports events; on the other hand, Saudi Arabia Investment Company acquired the well-known international e-sports event ESL for $1.5 billion, which also has a very far-reaching impact on the e-sports industry chain, so the future in the event, execution, In terms of content production and dissemination and the broader ecological structure, e-sports is indeed a direction worth transforming, but it needs to be clear about what is suitable for you and what you are good at.
The new concepts such as metacosmity and NFT are not small in the capital market, but it is still too early in practical applications, such as the meta-universe that has been hyped up by the game industry, but we found that in the 2021 annual meeting, only two companies said to hold the meta-universe annual meeting, which shows that the scale of this application has not yet taken shape for hundreds of people (because no company holding the meta-universe annual meeting has released a follow-up video). The NFT is a double day of ice and fire, such as Ubisoft's desire to do NFTs, but it was sprayed in the sky by players, and Mu Hitomi's overseas sale of the "Endless Showdown" NFT blind box sold out in two minutes. While most game developers have questioned the criticism of NFT digital collections or cryptocurrencies, this trend has not been stopped, so in the future, even if you do not do this direction, you need to have some understanding of NFTs.
In 2022, the game industry is where money is flowing
Finally, in 2022, will the capital market continue to be optimistic about the game market? First of all, a set of data, according to the mobile game matrix statistics Tencent's investment in 2021, R & D enterprises are the main direction of Tencent's investment, according to last year's data, Tencent's annual investment in the field of games nearly 100 cases, in addition, ByteDance also invested in a lot of R & D enterprises last year. Among them, there are also B station, mobile games and other listed companies to continue to invest in game research and development enterprises, and in these invested research and development enterprises, there are many companies in the investment stage and do not have online products, a large part of these companies that have not yet had products are successful product experience in the past, or they themselves are well-known producers, so such companies will be chased by many game companies even if there is no product for the time being.
In addition to the company that has its own game business, according to the mobile game matrix, at the end of January 2022, there have also been non-game Internet companies interested in the game market, and the company's executives have had very successful game experience, the difference is that their investment targets have a very clear choice, such as the need to have relatively well-known products, the best to form IP planning, followed by certain requirements for the company's revenue.
In fact, at the beginning of 2022, although ByteDance's war investment department has been adjusted, the investment in the game industry is still continuing, including Eagle Point Investment Shanghai Star Line, Tencent investment in Polish developer Express Plan, etc., all occurred in 2022, especially in Eagle Corner as an example, during 2021, Eagle Corner invested in different companies in many fields, and this investment trend is mainly for Eagle Corner's existing products and further layout of future planning, so for enterprises with fist products For example, companies such as Mihayou, Lilith, and Paper,they may be more interested in investing in the future, and they are not only investing in games. But it is worth noting that no matter when, high-quality content companies are the first choice of investors, so game companies that have the ability to precipitate down to do content, please continue to run on this road!