From R&D to distribution, Chinese game developers are all going abroad. Almost every month, Chinese game developers are exporting new mobile games with high quality and high revenue, showing their strong dominance over the global mobile gaming sector. The great success of Chinese game developers has also enabled more and more European and American game developers to enter the mobile gaming sector.
From Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo to EA, Ubisoft, and Activision Blizzard, the top players in the mainframe and PC era, although they are lagging behind in the current mobile game competition, they may also become the most powerful challengers of domestic game developers in the global mobile game market with their IP advantages as competitors continue to increase their game business.
Leading Players Turn to Cross-platform Competition
In fact, due to the lack of European and American developers, the competition for top products is mainly concentrated in China, Japan and South Korea. With its number and history, Chinese manufacturers have more advantages than other manufacturers, especially in the supply capacity of new mobile products, which is basically 2 to 3 times that of Japanese and Korean manufacturers.
Some of them chose other categories to avoid competition with leading manufacturers, including plug-in games, integrated games and other casual mobile games. Top publishers like Tencent and Netease choose to publish more games favored by experienced 3A manufacturers. Launched a series of games, such as COD Mobile, APEX Mobile and Diablo: Immortal, to make profits worldwide.
At the same time, cross platform products represented by Genshin Impact are helping Chinese manufacturers compete with PC and console platforms. Based on the technology accumulation and lucrative income brought by development, more and more domestic publishers begin to consider cross platform skills as a necessary choice to improve quality and experience. In the short term, it can help them quickly enter the PC and console market, so as to obtain more users. In the long run, it also paves the way for incubating more domestic 3A masterpieces.
It is worth mentioning that Sony, which invested in miHoYo at the initial stage, has made a lot of money from the success of Genshin Impact. When Chinese companies try to achieve greater success on cross platform, Sony believes that the change of attitude towards mobile games is also of great significance to its future development.
Fierce Competition Among Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo
In August this year, Sony announced that it had established a PS Studio mobile department, which would operate separately from the PS console game business. This move was also seen as a clear signal for Sony to officially participate in the mobile game market. Unlike its old rival Microsoft, Sony did not adopt the same strategy to expand the strength of the mobile game team, but chose to recruit talents.
According to foreign media mobilegamer, in the past 18 months, Sony has quietly established an experienced mobile game team. These senior employees are from Apple, Kabam, Meta, Tencent, Samsung, Zynga and other industry giants. It should be noted that in May this year, Jim Ryan, the head of PS, publicly stated that PS has a large number of unique first party IP, which can be ported to the smartphone platform, and Sony is also exploring the mobile market in this regard.
While recruiting, Sony also announced the acquisition of Savage Game Studios at the end of August, which is the first mobile Game studio Sony has acquired. This team founded by Michail Katkoff, the mobile game research website DoF blogger, has a strong mobile game gene, and the product it is currently developing is 3A shooting mobile game.
In contrast, Microsoft’s enthusiasm for mobile games is undoubtedly more direct. During the tug of war with antitrust authorities in various countries, Microsoft has always claimed that one of the main purposes of its acquisition of Activision Blizzard is to have the mobile game development team of King, the developer of Candy Crush Saga, and Tencent is Microsoft’s more important competitor in the mobile game market.
Due to the failure of Windows Phone system, Microsoft, which is full of feelings on PC and host platform, is just like air in the eyes of mobile game players. Phil Spencer, the person in charge of Xbox, said in an interview with the media earlier, “I think it’s a pity that Microsoft lacks a native platform in the mobile game field.” He also pointed out that at least in Microsoft, when considering the possibility of acquiring Activision Blizzard, he focused on their ability to develop and operate mobile games and the PC games produced by Activision Blizzard. “These are the two topics that really excite our interest”.
Although Nintendo has not taken any new action in the mobile game field since October last year, we are still expected to see more and more Switch games launch derivative IP mobile games in the future. In other words, although Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have their own priorities, the three major host manufacturers have come to the same goal in terms of continuously increasing the mobile game business. This also means that the three host giants, which originally relied on their own hardware, are bound to have fierce competition in the mobile game era to compete for users’ mobile phone storage space.
Opportunities and Challenges Coexist
In addition to the above-mentioned game manufacturers, major European and American 3A companies have also come to explore the mobile game market. For example, Call of Duty: Warzone, jointly developed by Beenox, Activision Shanghai and Digital Legends, currently has more than 25 million pre-registrations worldwide.
At the same time, EA also launched APEX Mobile in the first half of this year, which is also a star product with 10 million pre-registrations. A mobile version of Battlefield is expected to launch within this year.
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six, developed by Ubisoft, also underwent B testing this year and is expected to launch shortly. Ubisoft says it’s important to note that the game is being developed by 11 of its studios in partnership with Tencent.
In fact, except for the card category, almost all types of mobile games can find opponents on the host platform, especially FPS and MOBA. On the other hand, despite in-depth analysis and accumulated development paths, these players may definitely be familiar with the rules of the mobile game industry. For example, in terms of marketing, how to deliver tangible results in mobile games requires their thinking compared to a limited investment in the platform.
