I don't know if you have noticed that in a corner, Tencent and Byte are secretly on the bar again.
Just some time ago, in order to grab business, Douyin came to himself with a knife.
They officially announced that starting from April 1st, a new Douyin Mini Game in-app purchase revenue sharing policy will be launched, adding a new "reduced version of the in-app purchase revenue policy".
The strength of this new policy is equivalent to the 10 billion subsidy in the mini program industry.
Because the traditional in-app purchase share is "four or six open", that is, the platform takes 40% of the revenue, and the developers take 60%.
WeChat next door also follows this model, only creative games, developers can get 7 percent.
But now, the new policy of Douyin has come out. Not only will developers be able to eat 90% of the revenue, but the platform will even subsidize advertising incentives equivalent to 5% of total Android spending.
What does Douyin's bloody fracture promotion mean, it should be very obvious, it is to steal the small program game business of Big Brother's WeChat.
This can't help but make people curious, didn't Byte just give up the game, why did he turn his head and spend so much effort to water the Mini Program game?
In fact, mini-program games have quickly become the mainstream of the game market now, and there is even a momentum to overshadow APP mobile games. Douyin doesn't put in some real effort, but the soup can't catch up with the heat.
Almost every once in a while, the mini program game can conjure up an industry "miracle" for everyone.
Jump in 2018, "Synthetic Big Watermelon" in 2021, and "Sheep a Sheep" and "King of Salted Fish" in 2022.
According to Guohai Securities' calculations, the company behind "The King of Salted Fish" has achieved an estimated total domestic turnover of 1.233 billion in 2022.
This is far from the pinnacle of Mini Program games, in fact, the game industry will officially enter the first year of Mini Program games in 2023.
According to QuestMobil, the number of monthly active users of WeChat Mini Program games reached 750 million in 2023.
At the same time, the actual revenue of the Mini Program game market also soared by 300% to a terrifying 20 billion yuan.
The popularity of the Mini Program game has even made the life of the development engine behind it better.
Unity was on the verge of destroying an old 2D game development engine like Cocos. But now, feng shui takes turns.
The old brother in our game group commented: The h5 mini-game has turned over from the bottom of the chain of contempt, and it is Cocos' turn to look down on Unity.
Sheep a sheep to recruit cocos development engineers
In the face of such a 10 billion cake, everyone can't sit still.
Not only WeChat and Douyin, but also Alipay, Meituan, QQ, and any head APP you can think of have launched mini program games.
Even, Meituan, a food delivery and local life, held a special press conference for game developers at the end of last year.
Entrance to the Meituan mini game
The platform is like this, not to mention the game manufacturers, who can get a little bit of the edge of the fish to enter the market.
Last year, the bad reviewer once contacted a game company, and at that time they were still betting on Douyin barrage games, and now they have long since become the shape of a mini program.
However, what really added a big fire to the Mini Program were the traditional game companies that were turning the wheel. Put the traditional mobile game APP into the mini program.
It can be seen that in 2023, there will be a batch of concentrated outbreaks
As for the reason for this transformation, the answer given by respondent PP is also very simple: "The threshold is low, and the input cost is negligible. ”
First of all, the development cost is very low, you can apply the existing game kernel and values, change the theme packaging, and you can directly bake.
Xiao P also politely said to the bad reviewer Junming, this is abbreviated: change skin.
Moreover, the purchase cost of mini games is also much lower than that of apps.
After so many years of development, APP mobile games have long been stuck in a bottleneck.
Even SLG, a high-recharge game manufacturer that hugs Big Brother's thigh, has complained to bad reviewers, and now it is getting more and more difficult to buy a user.
However, the users on the Mini Program are not only these veteran players, they have also attracted a large number of people who have never played APP mobile games, especially awakening the competitive spirit of a group of users aged 40 and above.
In addition, the feature of the mini-game [Click & Play] also makes it a lot easier to buy.
We saw a mobile game ad before, and we thought the content was good. You'll need to go to the store, download the app, and finally sign up for an account to start playing.
But now after swiping the mini game ad, you only need to click on the video and jump directly to the game to play.
And the fewer steps in between from swiping to converting to players, the more efficient the conversion will be, and the more likely the ad will be successful.
For example, in the game "Little Ant Country" launched by Sanqi Mutual Entertainment, the streaming material of the mini program in the first quarter of last year was almost double that of the APP. This shows that the purchase volume of the Mini Program is very good, so it will continue to be added.
In the end, the mini program created more than 10 million monthly turnover for Sanqi.
In addition to the low R&D cost and low purchase cost, its maintenance cost is also much lower than that of traditional apps.
Many people criticize and say that this kind of small game has no nutrition, such as a sheep and a big watermelon, and many people give up after playing for a while.
But P-C doesn't care at all, he thinks that another benefit of Mini Programs is that manufacturers don't need to spend too much effort to maintain old players.
Because the generation of young gamers is updated quickly, after this group of players is gone, the next batch will be added immediately.
Not only does it rely on accurate purchases, but with WeChat's community, users can also naturally fission. The game in Xiao P's hand now doesn't need to buy much, and it can maintain tens of thousands of daily activities.
It is because of this low-maintenance feature that manufacturers can "harvest" players as quickly as possible.
For example, in order to roll over other manufacturers, Xiao P officially launched a 0.1% off game. That is, all the recharges in the game are discounted by 0.1. Someone else makes a first charge of 1 yuan, and they directly hit the price to 0.01 yuan.
The "bottom players" who are not even micro-krypton in domestic mobile games have become krypton bosses in their games.
The bad reviewer himself tried it, and basically charged 5 yuan, and he could speed through the first 300 levels.
Seeing this, you may be curious, with such a low recharge amount, can they really make money?
Don't worry at all, Xiao P revealed that when the game event was first launched, he made a net profit of 2 million a month after deducting the cost of buying millions of dollars.
That's right, a few pennies of recharge stuffed millions into their pockets.
In terms of R&D, purchase, maintenance and other aspects, it is extremely cost-effective, and it is still in the rising period, so manufacturers can only boldly "harvest" and have a large amount of revenue.
It's no wonder that manufacturers, large and small, are hungry for this piece of fat.
In the early days, the market was still relatively green. There are only such as synthesizing big watermelons and jumping jumps, which do not require a version number, and develop a game that can be quickly launched in 1-2 months.
On the other hand, the profitability of the game will be slightly worse, and it can only rely on advertising exposure to obtain income.
Now, after the end of these game veterans, they have brought a large number of regular troops with version numbers, so that the Mini Program game has since entered the mixed doubles mode of in-app purchase + advertising revenue.
The mature money-making model can not only allow white prostitution players to become stronger by watching advertisements, but also allow the big brother with money in his pocket to find the entrance to spend money and recharge.
From the beginning of 2022 to August 2023, the daily turnover of hybrid monetization mini games has doubled.
The recharge entrance of Sanqi Mutual Entertainment's "Seeking the Dao Daqian".
It's just that the hotter the market, the more anxious Douyin is that is still circling around the periphery. Because it means that the market is gradually maturing and the layout of the contestants is also being finalized.
However, Xiao P said that most people will eventually choose to return to the WeChat Mini Program to search after being exposed to the game through other channels. As a traffic platform, Douyin has never been able to retain people.
Therefore, Douyin did not hesitate to use real money this time to bring more developers into the bag.
Of course, in the face of Douyin, which is long guns and short cannons, WeChat does not plan to give away the sweet and sweet to others. even anti-customer-oriented, greedy for Douyin's traffic business.
Last month, WeChat also announced that it would start "CPS cooperation", that is, let other traffic platforms promote their own mini games.
Now WeChat has united the traffic entrances such as App Treasure, QQ Browser, Sogou Input Method and Video Number Creators.
Now that you covet my business, I covet your traffic, and this tug-of-war is estimated to be fought for a long time.
Although the bad reviewer still can't imagine the scene of the mini program game, it really competes with the mobile game APP.
But the entire market has swelled to the present, and the defection of traditional manufacturers proves that users have made a choice.
With the efforts of the two families, this year's mini program battlefield is estimated to have a good show.