#蛋仔派对 #
After Blizzard took away tens of millions of players, a new casual competitive mobile game became popular in the 00s, which seems to have made NetEase fight a beautiful "turnaround battle".
Since the beginning of the year, "Egg Party" has been popular among young people, not only topped the iOS game download list, but has been on the App Store free game list for two months from December 23, 2022.
On February 23, NetEase released its financial report for the fourth quarter and full year of 2022.
According to the report, NetEase's net income in the fourth quarter of 2022 was 25.4 billion yuan, an increase of 4% year-on-year. Among them, the net revenue of games and related value-added services was 19.1 billion yuan, an increase of 1.6% year-on-year. In addition, NetEase's quarterly gross profit was 13.2 billion yuan, and non-GAAP net profit attributable to shareholders of the company's continuing operations was 4.8 billion yuan.
Looking at the full year, NetEase's net income was 96.5 billion yuan, and the net income of games and related value-added services was 74.6 billion yuan.
In particular, in 2022, games and related value-added services accounted for 77% of the company's net revenue.
Among them, "Egg Boy Party" is the most existential project in NetEase's 2022 financial report.
It achieved exponential growth during the Spring Festival, with daily active users exceeding the 30 million mark.
According to Qimai statistics, in the past month, the "Egg Party" game has earned about 27.3446 million US dollars (about 185 million yuan) on iOS alone, surpassing "Genshin" and second only to "Glory of Kings" and "Peace Elite".
In addition, the total number of views of the topic of Douyin's "egg boy party" has accumulated to 31.9 billion, and watching imitation dances and dubbing has also become a "source of happiness" for players.
Did NetEase fight a turnaround?
In this regard, Securities Daily reporter Yuan Chuanxi and Ran Dimension Ma Shuye successively exchanged with Shule, and Poor Dao thought:
After harvesting 00, it has become the common goal of current game companies, and NetEase has gone ahead of Tencent this wave.
If I have to comment on NetEase's earnings report, then my answer is: NetEase has essentially become a game-driven company.
Other businesses are not outstanding except for the initial website and mailbox, which still have a sense of presence, including NetEase Cloud Music, which burns money, and e-commerce, which has been weak.
As the earliest to open an original self-developed game in China, NetEase has long been the earliest and relatively successful series of super IPs of domestic games, giving it enough start-up capital to develop more game IPs.
This persistence has allowed its earnings to be good and maintain a steady momentum in the overall stall of the game industry in 2022.
In 2022, NetEase's R&D investment will reach 15 billion yuan, and the high R&D investment will further improve NetEase's original ability.
Although some people believe that NetEase's "Egg Boy Party" is hot, the flow of classic games is growing slowly, which has created the impression that new games are filling the holes in old games.
But in fact, in more than 20 years of game original research and operation, NetEase has always had the action of serializing and IP-based classic games, and the effect is good and user stickiness is strong.
Therefore, the growth rate of classic games has changed, only the previous generation of games has touched the ceiling, but if the classic IP launches a new generation version, the growth rate will be restored.
At the same time, new games such as Egg Party may also be IP, thereby enriching the NetEase game IP forest.
Therefore, the steady IP development strategy adopted by NetEase does not have new IPs to fill in the holes for old IPs, but opens up a new world to expand the derivative chain.
In this earnings conference, Ding Lei emphasized that NetEase will try to diversify the game direction, which also reflects NetEase's game philosophy.
That is: an extension of 20 years of consistent thinking.
NetEase has further established the direction of diversification in game research and operation, and it is also Ding Lei who has set the tone for the stability of the future development direction of NetEase games.
Original + R&D became its game brand feature and golden signboard when NetEase entered the game field in the 2000s and relied on agents to attract money everywhere.
Although its earning power is not as good as Tencent's, in terms of R&D and operation, it is the number one in the real Chinese game industry.
This high R&D investment makes it not have to be wrapped up in agent games, its own product system is perfect, its anti-risk ability is strong, overseas expansion is strong, and its recognition in the hearts of domestic players is also high, and the overall level of game business is in high-level operation.
In fact, this also makes NetEase's advantages extremely obvious.
There are online hits, continuous explosive R&D and operation capabilities, a huge inventory of high-quality IPs and the ability to mine new IPs (the earlier Westward Journey series and subsequent Onmyoji IP mining), and cooperation with popular IPs (Harry Potter) have given the industry great confidence.
Its current overseas expansion and mergers and acquisitions still take the small but beautiful and vertical exploration route with characteristic specialization, which has enabled NetEase to achieve differentiation from Tencent, and has more capital for global competition, and its future development is still as stable as in the past 20 years.
Author Zhang Shule, columnist of People's Daily and People's Posts and Telecommunications, expert of CEI Media Think Tank, senior TMT industry commentator, newly published book "Self-media Writing from Beginner to Proficient" (Tsinghua University Press).