Behind the high market growth in 2020, the mobile game industry is facing a new round of changes.

Since the game version number was reopened for approval in February 20 18, the China game market has officially entered a new stage of industry reshuffle. On the one hand, head game manufacturers are forced to adjust their strategies, a large number of small and medium-sized game companies are out, and investment events are greatly reduced, which makes the survival pressure of the game market suddenly rise; On the other hand, the continuous enhancement of game quality, the extension of product life cycle, and the sharp decline in the number of cottage games have also made the development prospect of China's game market more healthy and clear.

According to iResearch, the game market in China is at a critical stage of transformation, and there are also many industry pain points that need to be solved by all parties in the industrial chain. The game market in China, especially the mobile game market, is likely to enter a new round of market structure changes in the next three to five years.

Key words of China mobile game market in 2020:

High growth and strong competition

According to the data of iResearch, the revenue scale of China mobile game market is expected to reach 249.68 billion yuan in 2020, up by19.4% year-on-year; The number of mobile game players in China is expected to reach 7190,000, up 8.2% year-on-year. Thanks to many factors, such as game makers actively adjusting their strategies, vigorously exploring overseas markets, users' awareness of games, and enhanced influence of e-sports, the mobile game market has achieved great growth in both revenue scale and user scale, and this upward trend will remain stable for some time to come.

According to the statistics of iResearch, the investment situation of China's game market has undergone a great turning point in 20 18. In 20 17, the investment in China's game market was about 72.46 billion yuan, while in 20 18, the investment was only 266,543.8+300 million yuan. After entering 2020, the total investment during the period of1-May has even dropped to 1.32 billion yuan. On the one hand, due to the tightening policy of game version number, a large number of small and medium-sized game enterprises have been eliminated, and the number of game products has also dropped sharply in a short period of time, which directly leads to a decrease in investment; On the other hand, the overall competitive environment in the game market intensifies, and investors will pay more attention to the long-term development and resource integration capabilities of enterprises. The investment logic of "gambling on explosions" is no longer applicable to the current game market in China.

The mobile game market in China is in a critical period of transformation.

Content changes:

By September 2020, there will be 997 domestic online games and 55 imported games, totaling 1052. Although the number of games has been greatly reduced due to the limitation of version number, from another perspective, game manufacturers have paid more attention to the games that have been authorized online than in previous years. Before the game goes online, they are no longer eager to face the players, but continue to seriously polish the quality of the game and promote it after doing enough details; After the game goes online, we will continue to invest resources and strengthen operations, and we will not give up any product easily. It can be seen that the adjustment of the version number policy has promoted the product quality improvement in China's game market.

Changes in demand:

With the rapid development of mobile games in recent years, the game awareness of China gamers is also constantly improving. The business model of "making quick money" by changing the skin, brushing the list and copying the cottage is almost impossible to survive in the current market. Only high-quality, high-quality game products have the opportunity to stand out in this era. But it needs to be clear that there is no shortage of high-quality products in the market, and each category has its corresponding representative works. Under the premise of ensuring the quality, the new game also needs high-quality publishers and promotion channels to reach the target users of the products more effectively.

Technological change:

VR, AR, and blockchain are all new technologies that have emerged in the past two years and have a strong correlation with the game industry. However, judging from the actual market performance, most of them are just a flash in the pan and have not had much impact on the market structure. At present, "5G+ cloud game" is the next strategic point that domestic and foreign manufacturers are laying out. Cloud games not only break the barriers between PC, mobile phone, TV and other game devices, but also break the distribution mode and charging mode of traditional games, which means that once cloud games are accepted by users, it will logically change the industrial chain structure of the game market from the bottom. Cloud game technology is a great opportunity and a severe test for game developers, game publishers and game distribution channels.

The road to efficient game distribution is full of challenges.

"Creating innovative and interesting boutique games" has become the knowledge of game manufacturers, but it also means high R&D and promotion costs. High-quality games have higher requirements in art and creativity, and need to invest more manpower and time in research and development; Similarly, in the distribution and promotion, how to effectively convey the gameplay ideas and game concepts to users and interact with players at a deeper level is a difficult problem facing the current game distribution.

Under the premise that mobile games occupy a dominant position in the market, the industrial chain of China's game market has been very mature and stable. In this case, it is difficult to solve the pain point that the game market has been relatively solidified. Judging from the market trend in recent two years, the main changes and innovations are concentrated in the game distribution market. In particular, the content reform of the game distribution platform itself establishes a user community through better content, thus promoting the game more effectively and improving the distribution efficiency.

Looking deeper, while the game products are becoming more and more exquisite, it also brings an inevitable drawback-the game download package is too large. According to the data released by TestBird, up to 35.5% of the installation packages are larger than 300MB, and only 1 1.3% of the game installation packages are smaller than 50MB. However, the size of the game installation package is often inversely proportional to the player's download rate, which has a great influence on the transformation of game download. For thousands of non-head products in the mobile game market, the solution of every small pain point may bring more users and income.

However, from the perspective of SMEs, there are almost no better solutions except investing more resources and costs to cover these pain points. In this regard, some game distribution channels have put forward completely different solutions, which not only give more support to developers from the perspective of channels, but also rely on their own technical strength to use the brand-new "try first and then download" distribution technology to effectively improve the distribution efficiency of game products.

"Three Axis" of Huawei Game Center to Improve Distribution Efficiency

With the diversification of game promotion methods, social platforms, short video platforms, content platforms and vendor channels can all carry the function of game distribution. Among them, the game channel, as the earliest and most mature distribution platform in China's game market, is still the backbone of the promotion and operation of major games.

Based on the concept of "serving game developers and helping quality games", Huawei Game Center decided to solve the pain points caused by the distribution of game products from three aspects: products, content and technology:

(1) Promote quality games through product evaluation and full-process support.

Although the cooperation mode between game channels and game developers is not limited to the simple product distribution function, the depth of cooperation is still very limited. To this end, Huawei Game Center will give creative boutique games full link support policies.

In terms of research and development, Huawei provides developers with a cost-effective cloud development environment to improve development efficiency; In testing, developers can obtain test data and optimize the version quality. Huawei Game Center will determine the game score according to the internal test data and give it the first promotion resource; In terms of distribution, Huawei Game Center has multiple distribution methods, such as reservation, promotion position, gift package and fast game, to improve the efficiency of game distribution. In terms of operation, Huawei Game Center provides all stages of player operation, such as content recommendation, data feedback, community management, event operation and player recall, to promote the long-term operation of the game.

(2) Relying on high-quality game content and communities to build content distribution capabilities.

(3) Relying on new distribution technology to improve distribution efficiency.

On 20 19, Huawei Game Center officially launched the fast game service. Users can start playing games without downloading them. When users are willing to download, they can choose to download the APP, and the user's playback records will be synchronized to the downloaded APP. The introduction of this technology will completely solve the pain point that hinders players' willingness to download because of the game capacity, greatly reduce the experience cost of players, and effectively help all kinds of high-quality game products to further realize the effective transformation of new players.