On May 25, 2023, NetEase released its financial report for the first quarter of 2023. For the quarter, NetEase's net income was RMB25 billion and net revenue from games and related value-added services was RMB20.1 billion.
Classic IP continues to be stable, and content co-creation drives the long-term development of products
During the quarter, NetEase Games' classic IP games continued their long-term vitality, and games such as "Fantasy Westward Journey" and "Westward Journey" continued to maintain a steady growth momentum. The computer version of "Fantasy Westward Journey" has launched the Chinese New Year Jinyi Xiangrui and related gameplay quarterly, which has enhanced the game experience and is widely welcomed by players; "Fantasy Westward Journey" mobile game ushered in its anniversary, and a new Terran legal sect Meruhai debuted; "Westward Journey 2 Classic Edition" and "Westward Journey 2 Free Edition" continued to cultivate Chinese style content and player community during the quarter, and product revenue and activity were stable; The "Westward Journey" mobile game continued to cultivate the new version operation model this quarter, successfully activated the broader market ecology, and maintained high activity and high return performance in product data.
In addition to the popularity of classic IP works such as "Fantasy Westward Journey", NetEase's self-developed explosive new product "Egg Boy Party" achieved another good result, becoming the most downloaded iOS game in China in the quarter, further consolidating its leading position in the field of casual competitive games. At present, "Egg Party" has more than 30 million daily active players, attracting millions of players to participate in map co-creation, and adding more than 100,000 maps every day, forming a highly sticky and strong social content ecological barrier.
Through liberating players' creativity, "Egg Party" uses UGC works full of crowd wisdom to achieve the integration of values in diverse fields, precipitates a lot of map content rich in humanistic history and social value, and has received widespread attention. For example, the map of "Xiaoshe Sencha" uses the interactive advantages of the game to innovatively interpret the tea culture of intangible cultural heritage, allowing traditional culture to enter the public's vision in a novel and friendly form; Focusing on marine environmental protection, the "Love of Dolphin Bay" map shows the challenges faced by marine life in an interactive and entertaining gameplay, and touches players to think about the harmony between man and nature in an entertaining and educational way.
Through the model of "innovative gameplay + high-quality content + open ecology", NetEase Games has opened up a new pattern of game content production. At the recent 520 press conference, Wilderness Ops announced that it was about to update the second phase of "Wilderness Making" gameplay, which will allow players to participate in map creation; The new game "Mission Zero" has not yet been launched, and the "Zero Co-creation Group" and editable maps have been launched. In addition, games such as "Ace Race", "Werewolf Kill Official", "Epic of Taya", and "Minecraft" have also allowed players to participate in the co-creation and co-construction of game content through their respective update plans.
AI technology reserves are deep, enabling innovation in game content production
At the same time, NetEase Games is also continuing to explore the "AIGC+UGC" model, further lowering the threshold of game creation with AI technology, thereby stimulating the national creative boom and reconstructing the content model and business ecology of the game. It is understood that NetEase's self-developed AI technology has been applied to the whole process of game industrialization, and AI technology has increased the work efficiency of key links by up to 90%. NetEase Interactive Entertainment AI LAB has developed dozens of AI efficiency improvement tools, covering AI voice generation, AI original picture generation, AI video motion capture, AI model generation and many other links. With the help of the self-developed AI face model generation tool "iPhoto2Avatar", 2D original art design and 3D face model can be industrialized and quickly generated. With the self-developed AI video motion capture tool "AIxPose", the actions of characters in the video can be extracted with one click and transferred to the virtual character, which is greatly improved compared with the traditional production process.
The technology of continuous iteration also provides a solid foundation for NetEase Games to lay out the next generation of flagship products. Based on NetEase Fuxi AI large model technology, the intelligent NPCs in the "Against the Water and Cold" mobile game will have their own personality, emotions and memories, actively socialize with players and other intelligent NPCs, form a self-iterative and updated relationship network in the open world, and bring players a new experience. "Against the Water and Cold" mobile game will be open beta on all platforms on June 30, which is expected to set a new industry benchmark in the field of MMORPG games.
In addition, the next-generation gold-winning mobile game "Extraordinary Vanguard" and the new triple-A racing game "Peak Speed" will also be officially launched on June 8 and June 20 respectively.
Establish a social responsibility promotion center to open up new ways to protect minors
In addition to the product, NetEase Games also announced its latest actions to protect minors. As one of the earliest enterprises in China to establish a juvenile protection system, NetEase continues to explore new models and new experiences to protect the healthy growth of minors from three dimensions: technical interception, social co-governance, and network literacy.
In terms of technology, NetEase's popular game products have been connected to AI and face recognition technology, and the identity of suspected minors determined by AI will be verified by the face recognition verification system to ensure the online security of minor users from the source. In terms of network literacy, NetEase Games established the "NetEase Game Social Responsibility Promotion Center" in 2022, which is committed to promoting cooperation between games and academia, science and technology, education, charity and other fields, promoting cultural inheritance, discipline construction, and protecting the growth of teenagers.
During this year's winter vacation, NetEase launched a special operation to continue to crack down on illegal properties related to minors' rental and sale of game accounts. At the same time, NetEase has also upgraded the "NetEase Parental Care Platform" to help parents prevent game addiction from the root. Parents can scan the code to bind their minor children's game accounts through the platform, and check and supervise their children's play information at any time. In 2023, NetEase will continue to upgrade and improve the protection system for minors to escort minors to the health of the Internet.