With the continuous development of science and technology, is the future game sector worth investing in?

1. 1 industry basic knowledge and materials

1) At present, there are nearly 600 million game users in China, and the era of national games has arrived. Multi-category and high-quality games have already entered people of all social classes and ages. Games are not just games, but have become an important part of modern social life.

2) The replacement of the old and the new in the game industry is a bottleneck that enterprises urgently need to break through. In the eyes of gamers, every game has obvious periodicity, generally only 3-5 years. Therefore, the moat and profit core of the game company is to constantly develop new explosive games, attract and retain a large number of users, and then make profits through membership fees and advertisements. However, at present, the homogenization competition in the game industry is serious, and the single game cycle is short, which cannot guarantee the sustainability of profit.

3) Under the background of today's rich material life, the development of games, especially the industry around games, is inevitable. The post-90 s young people who pursue individuality liberation and self-awareness awakening have a huge base, and a positive feedback cycle of game ecology is also taking shape, which doomed the game industry to be an extremely huge industry with immeasurable market capacity. After ten years of ingenious cultivation, China's game industry is in a state of blooming.

4) Game stories sometimes even spread to all corners of the country as folk culture. Many European and American players have developed a strong interest in China's traditional culture through "media" such as games. It can be said that the game integrates culture and knowledge into fun and can connect the excellent cultures of different countries.

5) Cloud games further open up the game market space: lowering the threshold for users to obtain high-quality games will drive the user scale and willingness to pay to increase simultaneously. According to the statistics of Alphawise, at least 10% non-game users in the world don't play games because of the high hardware cost. With the advent of the 5G era, on the one hand, it will overcome the shortcomings of traditional cloud games such as delay and slow network speed, and at the same time, the portability of game hardware will be greatly improved.

1.2 industry division

1) The essence of the game industry can be divided into two forms: software industry and network service industry. The whole game industry chain can be divided into development, distribution, channels and terminals (hardware). Almost every content form can't escape the "three-stage" growth law: content-driven stage, channel-driven stage and integration-driven stage.

2) Pan-entertainment, e-sports, live broadcast and VR (Virtual Reality) will be the hot trends related to games.

3) E-sports is a kind of "competitive" sports competition mainly based on electronic games. With the popularity of video games, all countries in the world have included e-sports in official sports events. This has become an important driving force in the game industry in recent years.

According to the data of SuperData, a global data research organization, the audience watching e-sports competitions around the world last year was about 2,654,380,400, and this number will continue to grow rapidly in the next five years, with an annual growth rate of 30%.

4) Functional games are well-thought-out games with a clear educational purpose, with no entertainment as the main purpose. They can be understood as serious games or application games, which are different from traditional entertainment games. The difference between functional games and traditional entertainment games is that traditional entertainment games are just for entertainment, while functional games are games that use the entertainment of games to convey information, education and training.

1.3 industry characteristics

1) The game industry may be the Internet industry closest to cash flow, and because of this, the competition in the game industry is unprecedentedly fierce in the cold winter when cash flow is precious.

2) On the whole, although China is the largest game market in the world, compared with the established game markets such as the United States and Japan, the domestic game industry is still in the growth stage and has not yet entered the mature development stage. Moreover, the scale of domestic paid game users, users' willingness to pay and the proportion of deep users are not high, and the self-research ability of domestic games has not been fully released.

3) China's game industry has high market concentration and pyramid structure. According to 20 18 China and market development & 2010; According to the investment and financing analysis report, the market share is concentrated in the head enterprises. Only Tencent and Netease have a market share of about 70%, firmly occupying a leading position in the scale of game users and game enthusiasm, and being in the first echelon of the game market; More than 200 listed game companies represented by Perfect World, Sanqi Entertainment, Youzu Network and Giant Network are in the second echelon, accounting for about 20% of the market share, and it is still difficult to shake the giant position. A large number of small game companies are on the verge of fierce competition, and their market share is only about 10%.

4) According to the "20 18 China and Market Development & Investment and Financing Analysis Report, the core industrial chain of games mainly includes the core links of game research and development, operation and channel promotion. For a long time, game developers have been in a weak position in the competitive relationship with operators and publishers. However, with the improvement of users' pursuit of game quality, the game industry began to change from "channel is king" to "content is king". Operators and publishers have also turned their focus to game content research and development, in order to serve the awareness of developers and players to gather a healthier industrial ecology. While extending to the upstream R&D end, the pan-entertainment of the game industry has been continuously enhanced, and the integration with surrounding industries has been deepened.