Gambling in smart TV games: the channel is in a hurry and the developers are confused.

? The rise of Android TV will set off a new wave of video games in spring. ? At the press conference of Xia

Gambling in smart TV games: the channel is in a hurry and the developers are confused.

? The rise of Android TV will set off a new wave of video games in spring. ? At the press conference of Xiaomi TV, Lei Jun said this.

In all kinds of analysis after the meeting, video games are rarely mentioned. Compared with mobile phones and mobile games, this is a relatively vague market, and most users have never been exposed to video games. How big the channel of Internet TV can be, how to locate the user group, and whether the game mode and experience of TV can be accepted by users are all unknown. Before the real scale of Internet TV, everything was a castle in the air.

However, neither TV manufacturers nor Internet companies want to wait passively. The industrial chain layout of Internet TV games is being developed by major manufacturers. Last week, Ali and Skyworth launched cool open TV, showing the game peripherals such as handles, wireless pistols and steering wheels. Prior to this, Samsung just showed three TV games at a smart TV tasting. On the same day, a developer conference on video games was also held in Nanjing.

The growth space of PC games is limited, mobile phone/tablet games have become a sea of blood, and smart watches are not suitable for playing games. Regardless of the prospect, from the current situation, the TV screen being invaded by Android has become the last blue ocean of mobile games.

Opportunity: Mobile Tour Blue Ocean Host Game Desert

? Mobile games may take only three years to complete the journey of 10 years? Costs soared, opportunities decreased rapidly, and the Red Sea became a sea of blood. ? Xing Shanhu, CEO of Le Dong, the developer of My Name is MT, said that many developers described this year's mobile game market as a sea of blood, and Tencent's participation made it even worse. "Everyday Cool Run" released by Tencent's mobile game platform last Saturday has ranked second in the free list of China App Store, and four of the top six games are Tencent's games.

More and more fierce competition has made some developers start to seek new development space, and a new wave of Internet TV boom has made them see opportunities. Huang Haiyu, chief operating officer of Entertainment Wireless, believes that Internet TV is still a blue ocean at present, and TV sets are likely to become game platforms in the future.

In fact, Jiujiushi Interactive, a subsidiary of Jiucheng, began to test water video games through set-top boxes as early as 2008. However, due to the hardware of the set-top box, the size of the game package is limited to several meters, and the experience is far from PC games and mobile games. However, according to Huang Haiyu, there are more than four games on the market that play games through set-top boxes, earning more than $1 million a month.

After the set-top box, the TV box became the new host. However, after testing the water through the box, LeTV, Xiaomi and Ali finally embarked on the road of TV. Su Meng, Chief Operating Officer of Fun Games, believes that in the box age, TV and games are two entrances to a screen, and the experience is separated. Switching between TV and entertainment can be a very troublesome process, and Internet TV unifies the entrance and is more in line with the needs of young people.

On the other hand, the restrictions of government departments on console games have also created a certain living space for TV games. The Ministry of Culture stipulates that no entertainment pure game consoles can enter the China market, resulting in domestic users still unable to buy game consoles such as Microsoft XBOX360 and Sony PS3 through formal channels.

There is not much comparability between the two in game experience, but they are in the same battlefield in the battle for TV screens. A person in the game industry said that console gamers definitely don't like porting Android games to TV, but in the competition of non-console games, Internet TV has more advantages in terms of channels and prices.

The defection of developers also shows that console games are declining. At the Game Developers Conference (GDC20 13) held in San Francisco in March this year, a survey showed that 58% of developers planned to develop their next game for mobile devices, only 13% said they were PS3 or XBOX360 game developers, and only 4.6% said they were developing Wii games.

Challenge: Pulling young people back to the TV is a gamble.

What is Lei Jun's definition of Xiaomi TV? Young people's first TV? This statement has been questioned by some insiders.

According to the data of CCTV sophomore year, the whole-day viewing scale of young viewers aged 25-44 has dropped by nearly 10 points since 2008. The viewing data of 2065,438+02 shows that the elderly over 55 years old have become the mainstream audience of TV, while the viewing rate of young users under 34 years old is gradually declining.

It seems a reasonable logic to bring young people back to TV with games. Some manufacturers have tried this method before. The somatosensory game platform 17VEE tried to let users play somatosensory games on TV through the set-top box, but the project has basically stalled due to problems such as experience. The company changed its name to Huyun Network and turned to the field of mobile games and smart TV application stores.

Kong Fei, president of Hu Yunwang, said? At present, the players of video games are basically around 30-45 years old, and many of them are full-time wives, playing some casual games at home. ? Compared with mobile phone players, the size of this group is pitiful, and it is almost impossible for the elderly as the mainstream population to become the audience of video games.

However, this is not the biggest problem. The frequency of upgrade is the real bottleneck of smart TV. Xiaomi TV is priced at 2999, and Ali cool open TV is priced at 1999, which is almost equivalent to a mobile phone. According to the data released by Youmeng, in the first half of 20 13, Android users in China replaced a new mobile phone every 14 months on average. In contrast, the cost and frequency of TV elimination are much lower.

? For TV equipment, the elimination time is too long, but the hardware may be updated in six months, and there may be mismatches in the future. ? Su Meng, chief operating officer of Fun Games, said that in order to adapt to these applications, users may still have to buy a box. ? So the problem goes back to the separation of experience.

Another big contradiction is that at present, TVs and most mobile phones use Android system, and the chips of manufacturers such as Qualcomm and NVIDIA are mostly designed for mobile phones, which have not been upgraded to the maximum due to battery considerations; After the emergence of Internet TV, it can break through the bottleneck of power consumption and develop more efficient chips. However, the elimination rate of Internet TV restricts the shipment, which makes the marginal cost unable to be reduced, because more efficient chips+low shipments = higher prices. Once Internet TV is rejected by the market, will these chip manufacturers? Take the consequences? .

Pulling young people back to the TV is a gamble. If it fails, it's not just TV manufacturers that will lose.

Rush channel and confused CP (developer)

Different from mobile games, channels in Internet TV games go faster than developers.

A number of game developers revealed to Netease Technology that manufacturers such as LeTV and Xiaomi have come to seek cooperation in developing video games, but at present most developers are in the wait-and-see stage.

Liu Yong, CEO of Hot Cool Games, the developer of Find Your Sister, told Netease Technology that many manufacturers have come to seek cooperation, but at present Hot Cool will still focus on the mobile phone and tablet market, paying little attention to Internet TV, and will not rule out cooperation with TV manufacturers in the future, but only if the TV channels are wide enough.

Huang Haiyu said that although video games can be adapted from Android mobile games, it still needs some time and capital cost. Whether to cooperate or not depends on what resources the manufacturer can provide. If the resources are good, consider forming a small team to adapt video games.

In addition to doing and not doing, another confusion of developers lies in what type to do. Huyun Network cooperating with LeTV, Xiaomi, Hisense, TCL and other manufacturers. , has done a preliminary test. Kong Fei said that casual games, including some "three-elimination" games, heavy games and online games, are not very popular because of the inconvenience of remote control.

However, Su Meng holds a different view. He believes that light casual games are more popular with mobile phone users, and TV has a wider visual range, which may be more suitable for heavy games. There may be products specifically for this scenario in the future.

At the same time, Su Meng predicted that the end-game manufacturers will enter the field of electronic games in the future, so as to reproduce the end-game ecology.

At the same time, with the precarious proportion of mobile games, more and more mobile game manufacturers hope to re-establish the right to speak on the TV side, rather than being completely controlled by channels.

Summary:

Traditional TV manufacturers and Internet companies are vigorously promoting the popularity of Internet TV, whether actively or passively. The significance of pioneers is far greater than the struggle between pioneers and martyrs. It may be too early to talk about the success or failure of video games, but if one day this living room entertainment core really produces value, these pioneers will become the biggest beneficiaries.