Today (February 24), NetEase released its financial results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2021. According to the financial report, NetEase's net income in the Q4 quarter was 24.4 billion yuan (RMB, the same below), an increase of 23.3% year-on-year, and the continuous operating net profit attributable to NetEase was 5.7 billion yuan, compared with 975 million yuan in the same period last year, an increase of 484.19% year-on-year.
In 2021, NetEase's net income was 87.6 billion yuan, an increase of 18.92% year-on-year, and net profit was 16.8568 billion yuan, an increase of 39.74% year-on-year. Among them, the game business maintained a steady growth momentum. Net revenue from online gaming services for the full year was $62.8 billion, compared to $54.6 billion in 2019. Net revenue from online gaming services in the fourth quarter was $17.4 billion, up 29.8% year-on-year.
In 2021, the development pressure of the game industry is greater, but NetEase has launched a number of new products. Ding Lei, CEO and director of NetEase, said in the earnings report, "NetEase's flagship game continues to remain stable, and we have successfully launched a series of new games such as Forever Doom and Harry Potter: Magical Awakening. These new game products not only further enrich our product matrix, but also show NetEase's strength in developing world-class game works. Looking forward to 2022, we look forward to bringing exciting new games to more players and consolidating the path of steady development." ”
Q4 game revenue of 17.4 billion yuan, an increase of 29.8% year-on-year, "Forever Doom" recorded a record with 6 million sales
Judging from the financial reports of NetEase in the past three years, the proportion of NetEase's online game business revenue has reached more than 70%, the revenue structure has not changed, and games are still NetEase's main business. In the fourth quarter of 2021, NetEase's online gaming business also maintained steady growth, with net revenue of 17.4 billion yuan, an increase of 29.8% year-on-year. Among them, the net income of mobile games accounted for 68.3%, about 11.884 billion yuan.
In NetEase's view, the growth of game revenue is mainly due to its increasingly rich and diversified game product matrix and its lasting vitality, in other words, the strong performance of new games and the strong vitality of classic game products. Indeed, in 2021, new game markets such as NetEase's "Forever Destroyed", "Harry Potter: Magical Awakening", "Ace Racing", "Endless Lagrange", "Super Fighting Dream" and "Absolute Interpretation" are very good.
Among them, "Forever Doomed" developed by 24 Entertainment Studio has sold more than 6 million copies since its launch in August 2021, setting a new record for domestic buyout game sales, and winning the honor of Steam's "Platinum Best-Selling Game" in 2021.
Since its launch in September 2021, Harry Potter: Magical Awakening has topped the iOS best-seller list and download list in Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan for many consecutive days. After being launched in December 2021, "Absolute Interpretation" also topped the Chinese iOS download list, performing well. In addition, the classic games of the "Fantasy Journey to the West" and "Journey to the West" series are still the most stable income base disks of NetEase, and continue to contribute higher revenues to NetEase.
Overseas, the influence of NetEase mobile games is also further enhanced, and contributed to the growth of mobile game revenue, such as "Wilderness Action", "The Fifth Personality" and "After Tomorrow" and other mobile games performed strongly in the Japanese market. Although NetEase did not announce the revenue of overseas games, it is still quite optimistic from the perspective of its overseas game development this year.
Diablo: Immortal will be released in the first half of the year, and Harry Potter: Magical Awakening will be released overseas in the middle of the year
Since 2015, NetEase has had more than one game occupy the top position of the category game almost every year. In recent years, with NetEase's mining of subdivided game fields and efforts in "globalization", the growth rate of its game business has been stable. As far as its current reserves of new products are concerned, NetEase's blockbuster IP derivatives still account for a large share.
According to the financial report and conference call information, the development of the host and mobile version of NetEase's new tour "Forever Doom" is progressing smoothly and is expected to be launched next year. New tours such as Diablo: Immortality and The Hidden Ghost of Qiannu are also in preparation, among which Diablo: Immortal will be launched in the first half of this year. "Harry Potter: Magic Awakening" and "Deadby Daylight Mobile - NetEase" will be launched in overseas regions within this year, and "The Lord of the Rings: Rise to War" will be launched in Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan in the second quarter of this year.
From the perspective of expectations, players have broken expectations for these new games of NetEase, and "Diablo: Immortal" has 255,000 reservations on the good game fast explosion, with a rating of 8.1. And "Qiannu Ghost Hidden World" has 62,000 reservations on the good tour fast explosion, with a rating of 8.6.
In addition to the game, NetEase's actions in the protection of minors have been further strengthened in the past year. According to the official, the NetEase Parent Care Platform has helped more than 100,000 parents solve problems. Through the monitoring of information inside and outside the game, in response to the sale of real-name information and real-name accounts by black studios to minors, combined with legal means to launch a special rectification action, NetEase Games reported and rectified 19 relevant platforms, and promoted the filing of 1 criminal case.
It is worth mentioning that in the conference call, NetEase repeatedly mentioned "globalization" and overseas markets. In the future, NetEase will focus on overseas markets while maintaining steady growth in the domestic market. In terms of talent and strategic investment, we will also focus on "globalization" and "overseas". In the past two years, we have also seen NetEase recruit many top overseas game producers and invest in overseas game teams.
For the industry's hotly discussed "meta-universe", NetEase also said on the conference call that the metacosm is a combination of virtual and reality, NetEase has been developing MMORPG games in the past, such games themselves have the social prototype and economic system of the metacosm, so NetEase will make full use of the accumulation in this regard. "In the future, we will explore the metaverse from two aspects: one is to add elements combined with offline in the game to link the metaverse; the other is to develop a large-scale metaversic project from scratch based on the technology mastered by NetEase."