Gifts / Sports & Toys

On the evening of the 13th, the approval information for the version number of domestic online games in September was released. NetEase Games is on the list again, as are games from Tencent's subsidiaries.

A new force in international trade! Recently, top game makers Tencent and NetEase have been making frequent moves overseas, which is particularly noticeable in the general trend of "cost reduction and efficiency improvement". Since the beginning of this year, the global game industry has been on the rise. Microsoft wants to swallow the old game company Activision Blizzard, opening the curtain of a new round of reshuffle in the global game field.

From the sporadic works going overseas in the past two years, to the current overseas layout of teams and studios, games are not only games, but also specific application scenarios for the next-generation Internet. Obviously, under the background of the weak global game market, many giants have quietly begun to hunt for the bottom, and even the "metaverse" card position battle has now entered the final stage of the top companies.

Layout out to sea

Against the background of the adjustment and contraction of major business lines, the gaming industry may be one of the few areas where Tencent is still willing to spend a lot of money. A week ago, Ubisoft, a well-known French game company, announced that Tencent would invest 300 million euros in a stake.

According to the announcement, Tencent invested 300 million euros (about 2.1 billion yuan) in the Guillemot brothers, its controlling shareholder, to acquire 49.9% of the shares and 5% of the voting rights of the Guillemot brothers. At the same time, Ubisoft has authorized Tencent to increase its direct shareholding in Ubisoft from the existing 4.5% to 9.99%.

As a world-renowned veteran game manufacturer, Ubisoft's business has always focused on console-side 3A game masterpieces. With the excellent production of its games, after the Notre Dame Cathedral was hit hard by fire in 2019, Ubisoft provided the official digital model of Notre Dame Cathedral collected during the production of the game to help rebuild this monument.

In fact, Tencent has made continuous moves in the acquisition of overseas game companies this year. On August 31, Tencent spent about 19.5 billion yen (about 970 million yuan) to become the second largest shareholder of the Japanese game company FromSoftware (FS) through fixed increase, holding 16.25% of the shares. The latter is the developer of this year's game industry hit single-player work "Ayrden's Circle". It is worth noting that another participant in this fixed increase is Sony Interactive Entertainment, accounting for 14.1%. On the same day, NetEase, the second-largest domestic game maker, also announced that its game division had acquired French game developer QuanticDream.

If the leading manufacturers expand overseas markets through mergers and acquisitions, then emerging game companies tend to go directly overseas. In July this year, Shanghai-based game company Mihayou announced the official opening of its new HoYoverse headquarters in Singapore. Another newly emerging game company, Lilith, also announced in April this year that it has established a publishing company Farlight Games in Singapore to provide support and services for the global distribution of Lilith games. According to a person close to Lilith, the company's key projects this year are mainly concentrated in overseas markets.

In the past two years, one or two small games have opened up the international trade market, and now they have brought their teams and studios to take root overseas directly. Domestic game companies are entering a new stage of going overseas.

"The direct distribution of projects and teams overseas can not only reduce costs and increase efficiency, but also make products more grounded and competitive in overseas localized distribution." The person in charge of an emerging game company said that in addition to greatly reducing costs In addition, forming a team overseas can also avoid the risks of related policies. Since the approval of game version numbers was suspended last year, although the review of version numbers was resumed in China at the beginning of this year, the overall number has dropped significantly.

Card slot for "Metaverse"

How has the game company’s record been after going overseas for a few years? From the perspective of the proportion of overseas revenue, the current A-share game company Sanqi Interactive Entertainment has surpassed Tencent and NetEase, ranking first among domestic top game companies. According to previous company disclosures, in the first half of this year, the company achieved overseas operating income of 3.033 billion yuan, accounting for 37.48% of total revenue, an increase of 48.33% over the same period last year.

In August this year, Perfect World teamed up with Tencent to launch the international version of the flagship product "Magic Tower" to the international trade market. "Perfect World is an old-fashioned content manufacturer, and its game production level and technology are excellent, but its channels, especially overseas channels, are weak," an industry insider said. It is reported that the agent of the international version of "Magic Tower" is LevelInfinite, an overseas distribution brand owned by Tencent. It was previously reported that Tencent spent over 200 million yuan for the game's overseas purchases alone. On the day it was launched, the game entered the top ten in the iOS game download list in 122 countries and regions.

In recent years, the growth of the global game market has been sluggish, and domestic manufacturers have also been implicated. In the first half of this year, the overall growth rate of the international trade market for domestic game companies began to slow down. Nearly 70% of the manufacturers experienced a year-on-year decline in overseas revenue in the first half of the year. Among them, 5 companies' overseas revenue fell by more than 40%, and only 4 companies' overseas revenue increased by more than 10% year-on-year.

But on the other hand, the downturn in the industry has brought opportunities for investment. "From the perspective of capital, now is a good time to pick up leaks, because basically global game companies are at low valuations." A game industry analyst told reporters that taking Ubisoft, which Tencent has invested in this time, as an example, Shares of Ubisoft itself are currently trading at lows not seen since 2017. Activision Blizzard, which was previously acquired by Microsoft, was also in trouble for a while. "Excellent game companies are scarce targets in the world, and large companies happen to have sufficient cash. It is logical for the two parties to combine at the moment." The analyst said.

The so-called drunkard's intention is not to drink wine. The giants' scramble to acquire leading game studios is regarded by the industry as a "card position war" before the arrival of the "metaverse". "These giants are not buying game studios for short-term financial investment, and they are not even interested in the products that these studios already have, but because of their deep technical accumulation, which is necessary for the future metaverse." One Game designers believe that the immersion required by the metaverse is inseparable from the support of a large number of sophisticated interactive technologies.

Taking the common sense of "strike" in games as an example, the above-mentioned designers further said: "The immersive experience will definitely involve these interactions, and this is precisely the core technology of some established foreign manufacturers." It is reported that some established foreign game studios There are tens of thousands of pages of technical guidelines in this area, and there is still a big gap between domestic and foreign technology accumulation in related fields. "If we can cooperate with these manufacturers and share related technologies through acquisitions and other methods, it will definitely greatly improve the speed of international trade development of domestic manufacturers."