Backed by Tencent, can it be undefeated in the game market?
In the past, it seemed to be the right solution, and now there may be some mistakes.
For three consecutive days, the stock price of Chuangmeng Tiandi, which has the blessing of many star capitals, has taken a roller coaster.
On April 28, Dreamworld closed at HK$3.73 per share, up 29.51%, after a 37.8% rise in closing price on the previous day, showing a strong rebound on both days.
The stock price rally is closely related to the previous flash crash of stock prices. On April 26, the share price of Chuangmeng Tiandi plummeted by 49.02%, and at one point it fell more than 70% intraday.
In this regard, Chen Xiangyu, founder, chairman of the board of directors, executive director and CEO of Dreamworld, reacted quickly, first posting a response in the circle of friends, and then in a conference call held in the afternoon, saying that the company's operation is normal.
The reason for the rebound may also be related to Chen Xiangyu.
On the same day, he increased his holdings by 1.2044 million shares at an average price of HK$2.32 per share, involving about HK$2.7952 million.
According to the data, this is not the first time that Chen Xiangyu has increased his holdings.
Since the beginning of this year, Chen Xiangyu has increased his holdings in the field more than 10 times. At present, his latest shareholding is about 265 million shares, and the shareholding ratio has increased to 18.64%.
What happened to Dreamland? Why this little-known game company has aroused the attention of all parties.
In this regard, Xie Ruolin, a reporter of Securities Daily, and Qi Xin, a reporter of Time Weekly, exchanged views with Shule respectively:
Background, extremely deep capital + game background, so that this game company in front of the players is not famous, but in the capital market is extremely concerned.
Thus, the state of the company can easily be seen as some kind of barometer of capital to the game market.
What is the background of Dreamland?
According to the data, the company has experienced 12 rounds of financing, and has received the blessing of many leading investment institutions including Tencent, Legend Capital, lenovo Venture Capital and so on.
In addition, Chuangmeng Tiandi has also attracted Wang Sicong's Pulse Capital, Ren Quan, Huang Xiaoming, Li Bingbing and other star-owned investment institutions, and He Youjun, the son of gambling king He Hongshen, served as chief marketing officer of the company.
More importantly, Dreamworld and Tencent have a deep binding.
According to the data, the operating income of Dreamworld mainly comes from three major sectors: game and information services, SaaS services, and offline entertainment. Among them, the game revenue was about 2.8 billion yuan, an increase of 14% year-on-year, accounting for 88.6% of the total revenue.
In July 2020, the RTS mobile game "Global Action", which was developed by Chuangmeng Tiandi and distributed by Tencent agent, was launched and was listed on the TOP1 of the IOS free list on the first day.
At the same time, in terms of offline business, Dreamworld is bound to Tencent and promotes offline with the help of QQfamily, Tencent Video, and console games.
Dreamworld's offline business "Play Together" began in 2017, with the theme of "Tencent Video Good Time", and the company jointly created the country's first experiential entertainment retail block with Tencent, Sony and Nintendo.
In March 2021, Dreamworld obtained the authorization of QQ family and opened its first flagship store in Shenzhen Happy Coast in July of the same year. By the end of 2021, Dreamworld has opened 18 QQ family stores. This year, Chuangmeng Tiandi plans to expand 40 to 50 QQ family experience plus retail stores, and will launch the Chao play online channel at the end of May and the beginning of June.
From this point of view, the core of this round of twists and turns is still "game", and it is Tencent game.
As a pioneer of Tencent Games in the vertical field of physical stores, the strength of Chuangmeng Tiandi has not been recognized.
I have to say that as a game company, the level of Chuangmeng Tiandi has not yet entered the stream, but it is a pioneer in the tide play, but it is only a role in the derivative market around game animation that began to attack in the 2020s.
And at present, Dreamworld's play in the derivatives market is similar to that of well-known game companies that have been trial-and-error and failure in the field for nearly 20 years, and there is no breakthrough result.
This can also be corroborated by the footsteps of the founding of Dreamworld.
In the early days of development, Chuangmeng Tiandi was mainly engaged in game agency, and the successful release of "Fruit Ninja", "Angry Birds", "Temple Run" and other games in China were all the rage, after which the company gradually developed into a game manufacturer integrating research and transportation, launching self-developed games such as "Little Animal Star", "Glory All-Star", "Witch's Diary" and so on, but the market response was flat.
From this point of view, the success of foreign games can be successful, but the self-research has stagnated, which just shows that it has advantages in the distribution and operation of service and marketing concepts, but it is not strong in product development and innovation with high technical and creative requirements.
At a time when domestic mainstream game companies generally strengthen research and development as a moat, the gap in game combat effectiveness will only become larger and larger.
This company's DNA is also influencing its cooperation prospects with Tencent.
As a pioneer of Tencent's attack on the game derivative offline market, Chuangmeng Tiandi is superimposed on the in-depth cooperation with Tencent in game products, and there seems to be no problem in performance.
However, in the long run, its offline market development prospects are too difficult, and the overseas game market has passed under the background of the surging domestic counterparts.
Specifically, in the past, the elimination games and competitive games that were more homogeneous and general in technology have been difficult to maintain market share under the two major trends of the domestic game industry collectively turning to high-quality games and games going overseas.
The offline game animation surrounding market development is extremely difficult, there is no strong IP and corresponding derivative forms, as well as special gameplay (similar to the blind box that was hot in previous years and now the heat is cooling), and its market development is equally difficult.
The capital market has doubts about its share of the overseas game market and the expansion of the domestic game animation peripheral market, which will inevitably cause large fluctuations in stock prices.
Of course, the dream of the dream world still has a world to exert, that is, whether it can successfully find a gold nugget posture in the derivatives market will determine its future development prospects.
Especially the IP backed by Tencent, its influence advantage is obvious, once the breakthrough may be a hit.
However, the disadvantage is that it has always been strong marketing services and weak creative research and development, and may not be enough to control the explosive development capabilities.
Author Zhang Shule, columnist of People's Daily and People's Post and Telegraph, senior commentator of The Internet and game industry