Text: Odd and Even, Author|Fan Wen, Editor|Zhao
With the official announcement of Microsoft, Blizzard, and NetEase, the more than 440-day Blizzard return series has finally come to an end, no matter how eager players are looking forward to it, in the final analysis, the most important reason for everyone to return to the negotiating table is still unable to let go of the game market of more than 600 million players in China.
Affected by various news thrown out by media such as "Competition" and "Bad Reviews", as early as the day before the official announcement, NetEase's Hong Kong stocks rose more than 4% on April 9, and U.S. stocks rose 3.76% after hours.
However, in the year that Blizzard games were discontinued, Blizzard's presence in China became less and less, and it once disappeared from public view.
At the end of 2023, Sina Technology launched a poll on "Will you return to the Blizzard national server", and about 44% of the 1,225 people said that they would not return to the Blizzard national server, citing the fear that the account would be gone.
A large number of players are worried about Blizzard's return to the national server this time, and it is difficult to say that it is not another leek cut, and when the benefits are unevenly distributed, they will be covered and left again. However, Blizzard China and NetEase promised that when the server is opened, it will ensure that the user's account data is kept intact, which can be regarded as reassuring the hearts of some players. "The games will be opened one after the other, and the first returning game will be reunited with you in the summer."
In addition to NetEase welcoming back the old games, Microsoft will also bring NetEase's new games to Xbox and other platforms, this operation, it is equivalent to Microsoft getting the support of China's second game manufacturer, NetEase is on Microsoft's thigh, and Blizzard has become a "side dish" for gifts, after all, a few happy and a few sad.
The days when Blizzard's national server was shut down were actually "calm"
In the days when Blizzard games left, they left behind two of the most valuable "legacies" in China, one is MMO players under "World of Warcraft". Traditional Chinese MMO games have opened a long-awaited welcome ceremony, such as "Guild Wars 2", "Sword Network 3" and "Tianxia 3", all of which tried to place advertisements on Warcraft Tieba to actively accept "Warcraft refugees", and finally achieved double-digit revenue growth.
NetEase simply did not hide it, not only launched exclusive veteran uniforms in "Against the Cold" to accept Warcraft players and guilds, but also designed and optimized the game accordingly based on the gaming habits of Warcraft players, and designed many small easter eggs hidden in the game "World of Warcraft" elements for players to excavate.
Tencent is in a hurry to move out of the "World of Taris" in an attempt to steal home, "double-end interoperability + do not sell values + focus on group capital" These improvement methods for the pain points of the game have made it highly anticipated in the domestic MMO market, but the year-long test has not been launched for a long time, and most of the players' patience has been consumed.
On the day the former got the version number, it was revealed by the media that the return of "World of Warcraft" was imminent, and the official blog had to come out to sell miserably, and players also ridiculed in the comment area, "Meal replacement is no longer on the table, and the staple food is coming back."
Source: Screenshot of Station B
Warcraft veteran player AA said, "For people like themselves who are now running four, there is no time to play, more of a thought, before the closure of the national server, I also put my children to sleep every night, go online or let acquaintances brush on the account, but in the group I am in, there are still a large number of old players waiting to return."
Judging from the final effect, NetEase's "Against the Cold" Warcraft veteran uniform has not only brought the popularity of "Against the Cold" back to its peak, but also allowed NetEase to taste the sweetness of low-cost fashion in the mall, and then the price reduction marketing of various games gradually became handy.
In contrast, Hearthstone's player base isn't actually significantly driven by a particular game.
Xiao Ke, who works as an operator at a game manufacturer in Guangzhou, told us, "The fact that domestic card games have not sprung up is largely due to the lack of competing products in the market. ”
In fact, the domestic thunder game "Demon Secret Land" and HOXI "Duel! The land of stone spirits" are very similar to Hearthstone in the duel and auto-chess gameplay, but players have preconceived intoxication with the cultural atmosphere of Hearthstone, and they are not interested in this kind of "meal replacement" that lacks IP recognition.
Moreover, after the shutdown of the national server, Hearthstone can choose Chinese Simplified Chinese on three servers in the United States, Europe and Asia, and mainstream accelerators such as UU, Thor, and Xunyou in China provide dedicated channels, and the threshold for switching to foreign servers is low, and the player's migration cost is mainly the amount of recharge for the gacha package.
Hearthstone players' gaming experience is largely based on the virtual property gifted from top-up purchases and in-game events. Because Hearthstone's virtual property includes both card backs and skins obtained through events and krypton, such as hero skins linked to Blizzard's own "World of Warcraft", and card back skins linked to other game events.
Especially according to the rules of the game, the card pool rotation mechanism of three seasons a year, from the "March of the Lich King" when the national server was suspended to the current "Wizban's Workshop" version, the national server is just behind the international server 3 major versions, and the expansion cards in the hands of players have withdrawn from the standard environment, NetEase Blizzard national server planning If you can't let players get enough card packs through activities and recharge discounts, players need to experience the complete game process, at least 5 648 yuan need to be recharged, and players will not pay unconditionally for the game's problems.
Black Bear, the owner of the game studio, was more emotional when he saw the news of Blizzard's return, "Now that the market economy is not good, many people can earn a living expense every day by playing games, and there are really not many games with stable incomes like "World of Warcraft" on the market." However, it is not cost-effective for us to re-enter now, and now all kinds of new games can burn high incense in half a year, and our 7-8 employees can make a lot of money by grasping this golden period, this kind of old game has no room for operation, and the life cycle is not easy to predict."
In the past year, Tencent invested in iDreamSky's "Cala Picchu" and its own photon development "High Energy Hero" in an attempt to seize the market with differentiated content, NetEase also resurrected the suspended game "Endless Warzone" to squeeze out the last trace of residual value, and Xinding even admitted that it learned from Overwatch to make "Firepower Soda (T3)", but various OWLIKE-type shooting games have not been able to get out of the circle, it can be said that "although Overwatch is old, it can still eat".
Deng Yiming, who works in a domestic securities, thinks that the industry is somewhat fussful, "Although I bought NetEase and Microsoft stocks, I think that this matter has not had as much impact on the two companies as public opinion, even if "World of Warcraft" and "Hearthstone", two leaders in the Chinese game genre, contribute to NetEase's turnover like that." ”
In Deng Yiming's view, "The most worrying thing now is NetEase's "Condor Shooting" that cost 1 billion 6 years to develop, the game has only 50 million turnover in a week after it was launched, and the official is no longer powerful, and it looks like it is about to die, this kind of control over large projects can reflect the real competitiveness and core barriers of a game company, a self-developed S-level game is yellow, and the impact is far greater than the various rhythms of agent products. ”
In this way, Blizzard's departure may not have as much impact on the Chinese gaming industry as expected, but Blizzard's return may bring a new situation to the game market.
Microsoft has teamed up with NetEase, and Ma Huateng should be on fire again
This "decisive breakup", which lasted for a year and two months, suddenly turned around, and in the final analysis, it was the maximization of the commercial interests of both parties, but the people on the negotiation table became Microsoft and NetEase.
Activision Blizzard, which was acquired by Microsoft, consists of Activision, Blizzard and King, and from 2020 to 2022, Blizzard's revenue accounted for 22.21%~22.44% of the total revenue of the entire Activision Blizzard.
Activision Blizzard's 2022 financial report shows that the Blizzard works jointly launched with NetEase in Chinese mainland contribute about 3% of Activision Blizzard's total revenue, but if you take out the Blizzard part independently, the "3%" just mentioned is equivalent to 13.5% of the revenue in 2022, equivalent to about 1.6 billion yuan.
In contrast, this part of the revenue only accounts for 4% of NetEase's total revenue, which means that all the games in Blizzard China combined, may not be as good as the income of NetEase's "Onmyoji", so the cooperation between the two sides obviously has a more far-reaching strategy.
For a long time, the industry has believed that the most important thing for Blizzard to NetEase Games is the value of IP, from Warcraft, Dark to Interstellar, Blizzard Game IP can be said to be an evergreen tree in the history of global games.
This cooperation is a relatively low-cost and efficient way for Microsoft to use Blizzard games as a pioneer to enter the Chinese market. On the one hand, Blizzard has a player base of nearly 10 million in China, which can pave the way for its subsequent console and mobile games. From the launch of "Warcraft", it can be seen that Blizzard's products are determined to enter the mobile game market, but with Blizzard's self-development efficiency and experience, there are many strategic variables that want to help Microsoft quickly realize its entry into mobile games.
On the other hand, the Chinese market has a very leading experience and industry accumulation in the field of mobile games in the world, before "Harry Potter: Magic Awakened" reached a total revenue of 2.33 million US dollars in the first week of its launch, which is the second most profitable Harry Potter IP mobile game in history, and "Diablo: Immortal" became the 15th mobile game in the world to break through the $500 million revenue mark less than a year ago, these two projects verify the amazing profitability of big IP mobile games and NetEase's strong production capabilities.
Source: data.ai
According to incomplete statistics from odd and even, NetEase has established 13 studios overseas since 2022.
For Microsoft, a game giant with many well-known game IPs, NetEase can undoubtedly help it "expand its territory" all the way in the transformation of mobile games, and with the help of Xbox and Microsoft's cloud gaming platform XGP, NetEase Games' 3A game dream and overseas ambitions may usher in a shorter acceptance cycle.
This kind of strong alliance is obviously the last thing Tencent wants to see.
Ma Huateng publicly launched at Tencent's annual meeting last year, games are Tencent's trump card business, and games going overseas is the company's biggest hope for internationalization. ”
Looking at the best-selling lists of major games, "Peace Elite", "Battle of the Golden Shovel", "League of Legends Mobile Game" and "CrossFire Mobile Game" have always been among the best, and they have also been mentioned repeatedly in the financial reports in the past two years, which shows that Tencent Games' revenue largely relies on IP adaptation of mobile games.
In 2023, Tencent will launch 18 mobile games, of which one-third are IP-adapted mobile games, such as "Metal Slug Awakening", "MapleStory Island: Legend of Maple" and "Stone Age: Awakening" were all highly sought after when they were launched, but due to the lack of innovation in gameplay, the number of players and revenue soon fell sharply.
In recent years, the "APEX" mobile game has been suspended for half a year after its launch, the "Call of Duty" mobile game has been tepid, the "Nier" and "Avatar" IP mobile games have been cut one after another, and the "DNF", "Assassin's Creed" and "Pokémon" mobile game IPs have been pinched in their hands, and Tencent has been bumpy on the road to IP mobile games.
On the other hand, the old rival NetEase, in addition to "Marvel Brawl" and "Marvel SNAP", which cooperated with Marvel to set off a global trend, also has a large number of IP adaptation mobile games such as "The Lord of the Rings", "Frostpunk Age" and "Warhammer 40K".
Write at the end
In addition to adding another classic "boomerang" to the game industry, NetEase Blizzard's composite drama may also become the beginning of the transformation of traditional game giants, but it will take a long time to wait and see how the industry pattern will change.
Nowadays, protecting players' virtual assets, winning back users' favor, and properly handling the "stolen year" will still be the most direct examination questions in front of both Microsoft and NetEase. It's about whether Blizzard games still have the potential and value to be continuously developed, and it's also a direct link for Microsoft to measure the intimacy of its partnership with NetEase.
"Hero, that's your past. This classic quote in World of Warcraft was once considered by many to be the "elegy" of Blizzard's games, but this time it may have become Blizzard's attack horn.