Zhang Yijun, first vice chairman of the China Audio-video and Digital Publishing Association and chairman of the Game Working Committee of the China Audio-video and Digital Publishing Association, released the "2023 China Game Industry Report" at the conference
A few days ago, at the 2023 China Game Industry Annual Conference, Zhang Yijun, first vice chairman of the China Audio-video and Digital Publishing Association and chairman of the Game Working Committee of the China Audio and Digital Publishing Association, released the "2023 China Game Industry Report".
The report shows that in 2023, the game market in mainland China has shown a clear trend of recovery, but the pressure is still great, and confidence needs to be boosted.
In 2023, the actual sales revenue of the domestic game market will be 302.964 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 13.95%, exceeding the 300 billion mark for the first time, the number of users will be 668 million, a year-on-year increase of 0.61%, a record high, and the actual sales revenue of the domestic market of self-developed games in mainland China will be 256.375 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 15.29%.
The record high revenue is mainly due to the fact that many negative factors have subsided significantly during the epidemic, and users' willingness and ability to consume have rebounded, new game products have been launched in a concentrated manner and there have been explosive models, which together with long-term operation products have supported revenue growth, and the widespread adoption of multi-terminal concurrency has significantly contributed to revenue growth.
Overseas revenue declined, and mini games became a bright spot in growth
Different from the gradual recovery of the domestic game market, factors such as turbulent international situation, fierce market competition, and changes in privacy policies have led to increased difficulties and operating costs overseas.
According to the "2023 China Game Industry Report", the overseas sales revenue of self-developed products was 16.366 billion US dollars, and the scale exceeded 100 billion yuan for four consecutive years. However, judging from the data, it decreased by 5.65% year-on-year.
In 2023, the United States and Japan will still be the main overseas markets for mobile games, accounting for 32.51% and 18.87% respectively, while South Korea is in third place with 8.18%. In addition, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Canada together accounted for 9.45%. Overseas emerging markets such as the Middle East and Latin America have not seen significant improvement.
Among the top 100 self-developed mobile games in terms of overseas revenue, strategy accounted for 40.31%, role-playing accounted for 15.97%, shooting and casual accounted for 10.03% and 5.11% respectively. In the past three years, the strategy category has been the main force of overseas revenue, and the total revenue proportion of the top three has increased from 63.87% last year to 66.31% this year.
It is worth noting that domestic mini program games have achieved substantial growth this year. In 2023, the revenue of the domestic mini program game market will be 20 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 300%. At this stage, the monetization model of Mini Program games mainly includes three types: in-app purchase payment, advertising monetization, and hybrid monetization. At present, due to the rapid increase in the proportion of in-app purchase payment, the scale of the mini game market has grown rapidly.
With its advantages of more accurate distribution, higher user conversion rate, lower R&D cost, and stronger applicability to scenarios, Mini Games are gradually becoming a new growth pole for industrial development.
In the view of Zhang Yijun, the first vice chairman of the China Audio-video and Digital Publishing Association and the chairman of the Game Working Committee, last year's "Sheep is a Sheep" was born and became a phenomenal hit in one fell swoop; However, although the new track of industrial development has broad prospects, it has not yet formed a scale and still needs to be patiently cultivated.
In the market segment, the actual sales revenue of mobile games increased significantly, accounting for 74.88% of the revenue, continuing to dominate, the actual sales revenue of client games continued to increase, accounting for 21.88%, and the sales revenue of web games continued to shrink, accounting for only 1.57%.
In 2023, the actual sales revenue of the mainland mobile game market will be 226.86 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 17.51%, setting a new record.
In 2023, among the top 100 mobile game products by revenue, role-playing will be significantly higher than other genres, accounting for 31%, strategy and cards will account for 9%, and shooting and chess and cards will account for 7% respectively.
In terms of revenue, role-playing ranked first with 29.55% of the total revenue, followed by multiplayer online tactical competition with 17.01%, and shooting ranked third with 14.7%, accounting for 61.26% of the total revenue. In addition, shooting, strategy, and card revenues all declined compared to last year.
In 2023, the actual sales revenue of the domestic client game market will be 66.283 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 8%, mainly due to the stable revenue of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), the continuous growth of revenue from head e-sports and two-dimensional games, and the simultaneous release of more new products on PC.
The actual sales revenue of the web game market fell by 10.04% year-on-year, and the overall scale was 4.75 billion yuan, which was the eighth consecutive year of decline.
In 2023, the actual sales revenue of China's console game market will be 2.893 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 22.93%.
In 2023, the actual sales revenue of China's e-sports game market will be 132.945 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 12.85%. It should be noted here that this data is the sales data of e-sports game products, and does not include e-sports live broadcast, club operation and event revenue according to international practice. The actual revenue data of the e-sports industry after adjusting the statistical caliber will be officially released at the annual meeting of the e-sports industry to be held next week.
The revenue growth of e-sports game products is mainly due to the stability of the basic disk of the top e-sports games, the launch of emerging e-sports game categories and self-developed new products, which have won the favor of players and brought significant growth to the market, and the successful holding of the e-sports event of the Hangzhou Asian Games and the outstanding performance of the Chinese team may have a certain blessing effect.
Although the industry has shown a trend of recovery, it should also be noted that the current challenges for the development of the mainland game industry are also very severe, such as the sharp decline in demographic dividends, rising operating costs, high player appetites, changes in payment Xi, product homogenization, as well as international turmoil, market rule modification and other factors, all of which are restricting the expansion of the business territory of mainland game enterprises and the effective improvement of their own strength.
Super digital scene attributes, the game can be linked to other industries
Players' continuous pursuit of game experience drives the continuous development of game technology, and in this process, game technology has become mature and independent, and has also become an important hard technology force to promote the integration of digital and real.
Based on the essential attributes of super digital scenes, games are widely linked to other industries, bursting out with powerful digital productivity, and serving the transformation and upgrading of thousands of industries.
During the meeting, the China Audio-video and Digital Publishing Association and the Industrial Culture Development Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology jointly released the report "The Source Power of Super Digital Scenes: Research on Game Technology and Innovation Application".
The report points out that with the development of digital technology, the super digital scene has a new understanding of the essential attributes of games. Through more open scene connection, game technology is unleashing huge digital productivity in more and more extensive social production fields, creating greater and greater social value.
According to the report, in 2022, the contribution rate of game technology to the scientific and technological progress of infrastructure in the era of digital and real integration, such as chips, AI, cloud computing, and mobile phones, will reach 18.65%, 31.37%, 51.08%, and 46.76%, respectively. The contribution rates to XR, autonomous driving, telemedicine, industrial design services and other cutting-edge industries of the era are 72.45%, 57.19%, 17.47% and 29.47%, respectively.
In the aerospace sector, gaming technology also plays an important role. In June 2023, a new generation of visual system jointly built based on Tencent's self-developed game engine technology and China Southern Airlines' self-developed virtual image display technology was released, officially becoming the third country in the world to independently develop a complete visual system.
At the time of the release of the report, Ao Ran, executive vice president and secretary general of the China Audio-video and Digital Publishing Association, believed that with the continuous breakthrough of key technologies such as artificial intelligence, as an important part of the digital economy, the essential attributes of the game industry have been re-recognized in recent years, and the value of the game industry has also been re-evaluated.
It seems that it has become a global consensus that games are super digital scenes, and many countries have successively introduced relevant industry support policies to seize the track of related industries.
For example, the European parliament promulgated the "Game Act" to explore the economic, technological, cultural and educational value behind games, Saudi Arabia launched a national e-sports game strategy to make Saudi Arabia a global e-sports center by 2030, and Russia conceived a systematic game industry support plan for the "future game industry".
In addition, the research results of "The Influence of Chinese Games" released by Ao Ran also show that games are becoming a "super digital scene" that constantly creates new value and new possibilities, and makes traditional culture continue to glow with new vitality in a more immersive, intelligent and interactive form of expression, and become a new way for the world to understand the advantages of Chinese culture in an all-round and multi-angle way.
According to the survey data, 91.6% of the respondents believe that Chinese games play an important role in the "going out" of China's excellent traditional culture, and 90.2% of the respondents believe that Chinese games are increasingly becoming a "new container" for China's excellent traditional culture.
In addition to the super digital scene, "game +" is also the focus of manufacturers. Zhang Yijun believes that more and more practical achievements show that there is a natural "resonance" effect between the game industry and technological innovation, and the practice of "game +" itself means innovation and infinite possibilities.
However, "Game+" is still in the initial stage of exploration, and the specific path of "vertical breakthrough" is still under construction.
(This article was first published on the Titanium Media APP, author|Li Chengcheng, editor|Ma Jinnan)