Competition in the mobile game market in 2017 will intensify domestic mobile games going to sea or welcome the outbreak period

Data shows that the actual sales revenue of games in China in 2016 reached 165.57 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 17.7%, and the growth rate slowed down; of which, the sales revenue of the mobile game market was 81.92 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 59.2%. In 2016, the mobile game market accounted for more than the client game market for the first time, accounting for 49.5% of annual game sales. The number of game users in China has reached 566 million, and the industry's demographic dividend is coming to an end. Mobile games will become the core growth point of the game industry in the future.

Industry insiders predict that the overall market of the game industry will continue to maintain stable growth in 2017. It is expected that the proportion of mobile games will further increase, competition in the domestic game market will become more intense, and the overseas game market will become a new blue ocean.

Market competition will intensify under the duopoly pattern

. In 2015, Tencent and Netease's total mobile game revenue accounted for 52.3% of the domestic game market. In 2016, this figure reached 66%. The increasingly obvious trend of oligarchy has become the current situation of China's mobile game industry. There is a saying among players that "There are only three game companies in China, one is Tencent, one is Netease, and the other is others." Mini games enterprises and entrepreneurs also began to pay attention to the intrinsic quality of games from excessive emphasis on channels.

Moreover, light mobile games such as elimination and casual games have slowly given way to heavy mobile games. The rise of Netease, which follows the heavy mobile game route, and Tencent, which mainly uses light mobile games to dominate the rankings, have weakened its control over the market. Obviously, paying more attention to R & D will allow more game companies to move from playing role in soy sauce to the front line camp. At the same time, the strong channel control and ability to dominate the list in the early days of mobile games began to fade, which is similar to the way ten years ago when PC-side online games gradually gave way to self-developed games to maintain lasting revenue. This is the beginning of the shuffle, not the beginning of the oligarchy.

Domestic mobile games will usher in an explosion period when going abroad

. Data shows that the mobile game market in developing countries and regions, especially Southeast Asia, South Asia and South America, is far from reaching the ceiling, and there is still huge room for development. In the future, with the popularization of smartphones in these countries and regions, the demographic dividend will promote the rapid development of the local mobile game market, and this is an opportunity for domestic mobile game companies.

Mini games companies have two obvious advantages in "going global": mobile games in most overseas districts can be launched only after being reviewed by platforms such as the App Store, without waiting for qualification approval, and funds can be withdrawn quickly; The overseas entertainment environment is more high-quality, and users have not yet developed the bad habit of eating "free lunches," which is conducive to cultivating good payment habits, and even users in some overseas markets have stronger spending power. Therefore, overseas markets, especially those in developing countries where market development is relatively lagging, have become new development space for small and medium-sized Mini games companies, and 2017 will also become an outbreak period for domestic mobile games to go abroad.

The mobile e-sports industry may enter a period of rapid development.

In 2016, within three months of the first KPL "King's Glory" professional league, the number of viewers exceeded 350 million, and the peak number of daily viewing users exceeded 8 million. The cumulative number of viewers of the traditional e-sports "League of Legends" S6 Global Finals is only 390 million. "Glory of the King" has more than 50 million daily active users, even exceeding the sum of the daily active users of the three traditional e-sports projects.

In addition to "Glory of the King", mobile games such as "Ball Battle" and "Clash Royale" also continue to launch their own professional leagues. Companies such as Hero Entertainment and Datang Telecom have also established mobile e-sports platforms Hero Sports and Tiantian E-sports to create e-sports events. From this point of view, in 2017, the rapidly developing mobile e-sports industry may be able to shake traditional e-sports projects.

Editor: yvette