In 2023, the world's game masterpieces will be frequent, and at the "The Game Awards" (The Game Awards) ceremony in early December, "Baldur's Gate 3" became the biggest winner, winning 6 awards in one fell swoop: Best Game of the Year, Player's Voice, Best RPG Game, Best Multiplayer Game, Best Community Support, and Best Performance in 9 award nominations, successfully defeating "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom", "Resident Evil 4", "Alan Wake 2", "Spider-Man 2" and other strong opponents, Sony, CD Well-known companies in the game and e-sports industry, such as Projekt, miHoYo, and JD.com, have also made their own gains.
Volume does not move in 2023
2023 will not be a quiet year for the game industry, although there are frequent game masterpieces, but the cold winter storm of the game industry is still continuing. In addition to Bytes, well-known game manufacturers such as miHoYo, Lilith, Paperstack, and studios under Bilibili are laying off projects and personnel, and many major projects that the industry is concerned about have been suspended. "Backlight Infiltration" and "Singing Tide", Xinyuan Interactive, a Guangzhou game R&D studio under Station B, has also experienced two rounds of layoffs, affecting more than 200 people.
According to estimates by foreign data website videogamelayoff.com, about 9,000 people have been laid off in the game industry since the beginning of this year. As of December 10, the top five companies in the world in terms of the number of game employees laid off were Unity, ByteDance, Embreser Group, Epic and Amazon. In 2023, major game studios such as Microsoft Xbox Game Studios, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Roblox, Ubisoft, Riot Games, and Blizzard have also laid off some employees.
In 2024 after the storm, what else is worth investing in?
In its latest report, market research firm Newzoo lowered its forecast for the share of gaming time in 2023 to $184 billion, up just 0.6% from last year. The company had previously expected gaming time to grow by 2.6% to $187.7 billion by 2023. Last year, the market saw a 4.3% decline as the huge push from the pandemic wore off.
As for the trends to watch in the global gaming industry in 2024, Lisa Cosmas Hanson, founder of Niko Partners, believes that mobile game publishers will have the opportunity to generate higher revenues through other monetization strategies, including out-of-app monetization, as legislators continue to pressure mobile platform owners to open up their "walled gardens". Niko Partners expects Apple and Google to continue to make concessions in 2024, allowing mobile game publishers to earn revenue through other app stores or payment channels.
With the development of AI, game development will be greatly accelerated, and the development of game engines such as Unreal will further lower the threshold for game development, and the double-edged sword brought by AI is being chopped. As more and more games flood into the market, competition will intensify, and the dark storm of layoffs will continue to blow, while opportunities are hidden in every small branch.
In 2023, the PC craze will become popular again, according to the list of statistics website HowLongToBeat, in 2023, PC ranks first in the number of game platforms chosen by global players, and even Japan, which was once the host self-reserved place, has also welcomed a large number of PC users: According to the PC game research released by the Kadokawa Ascii Research Institute, the size of the Japanese PC market has doubled for three consecutive years, achieving growth against the trend. In 2024, judging from the current trend, there are still a lot of surprises in the investment of PCs.
With the end of 2023 and the start of 2024 new capital, as more capital flows into game companies, investment in new games, acquisitions of small studios, project financing for externally developed games, etc., developers need to grasp the opportunities brought by technological innovation, deepen localization strategies, strengthen user engagement and community building, and continue to innovate and iterate on games to cope with growing international competition. Through these strategies, game developers can not only succeed in the global marketplace, but also bring players a richer gaming experience. With the development of technology and changes in the market, the game's overseas strategy will continue to adapt and evolve.