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In September, the domestic online game version number approval information was released. Netease games are again on the list, as are the games of Tencent's subsidiaries.

New forces in international trade! Recently, head game manufacturers Tencent and NetEase have made frequent overseas moves, which is particularly noticeable in the general trend of "cost reduction and efficiency increase". Since the beginning of this year, the global game industry has witnessed a new round of reshuffle in the global game industry. Microsoft wants to swallow the old game company Activision Blizzard.

From the previous two years when sporadic works were released to the sea to the overseas layout of teams and studios, games are not only games, but also specific application scenarios of the next generation Internet. Obviously, in the context of the weak global game market, many giants have quietly started to copy the bottom, and even the "meta universe" slot war has now entered the final stage in the head enterprises.

Layout Sailing

In the context of the adjustment and contraction of all major business lines, the game industry may be one of the few areas where Tencent is still willing to throw down heavy money. A week ago, Ubisoft, a well-known French game company, announced that Tencent had invested 300 million euros in its shares.

According to the announcement, Tencent invested 300 million euros (about 2.1 billion yuan) in Gilead Mott Brothers, its controlling shareholder, to acquire 49.9% of the shares and 5% of the voting rights of Gilead Mott 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 old brand game manufacturer, Ubisoft's business has always focused on the host side 3A games. With its excellent game production, Ubisoft will provide the digital model of Notre Dame in Paris collected during the game production to the official after the fire in Notre Dame in 2019 to help rebuild this historic site.

In fact, Tencent has made constant efforts to acquire overseas game companies this year. On August 31, Tencent invested about 19.5 billion yen (about 970 million yuan) to become the second largest shareholder of Japanese game company FromSoftware (FS News Agency) through fixed increase, holding 16.25% of its shares. The latter is the developer of this year's blockbuster single player game, Eldon Fahuan. It is worth noting that the other participant in this fixed increase is Sony Mutual Entertainment, accounting for 14.1%. On the same day, NetEase, the second largest game manufacturer in China, also announced that its game department had acquired QuanticDream, a French game developer.

If the leading manufacturers expand overseas markets through mergers and acquisitions, emerging game companies tend to go overseas directly. In July this year, Shanghai game company Mihayou announced the official opening of its new HoYoverse headquarters in Singapore. Lilith, another newly rising game company, also announced in April this year that it had established FarlightGames, a distribution company 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 focused on overseas markets.

In the past two years, one or two small games were opening up the international trade market. Now, with teams and studios directly rooted overseas, domestic game companies are entering a new stage of going overseas.

"Direct distribution of projects and teams overseas can not only reduce costs and increase efficiency, but also make products more grounded and competitive through overseas localization." The head of an emerging game company said that, in addition to significantly reducing costs, establishing a team overseas can also avoid the risks of relevant policies. Since the suspension of game version approval last year, although the review of version number was resumed in China at the beginning of this year, the overall number has decreased significantly.

Positioning for "Metauniverse"

How has the game company achieved in the past few years? If we look at the proportion of overseas revenue, at present, A-share game company 37 Mutual Entertainment has surpassed Tencent and Netease, ranking first among domestic head game companies. According to the previous disclosure of the company, in the first half of this year, the company realized an overseas operating income of 3.033 billion yuan, accounting for 37.48% of the total revenue, an increase of 48.33% over the same period last year.

In August this year, Perfect World teamed up with Tencent to introduce the international version of its flagship product, Magic Tower, to the international trade market. "Perfect World is an old content manufacturer with excellent game production level and technology, but channels, especially overseas channels, are weak." An insider said. It is reported that the agent of the international version of Fantasy Tower is Tencent's overseas distribution brand LevelInfinite. It was previously reported that Tencent spent more than 200 million yuan on the overseas purchase of this game alone. On the day of launch, the game entered the top ten in the list of iOS game downloads in 122 countries and regions.

In recent years, the growth of the global game market has been sluggish, and domestic manufacturers have also been involved. In the first half of this year, the overall growth of the international trade market of domestic game companies began to slow down. In the first half of the year, nearly 70% of the manufacturers experienced a year-on-year decline in their overseas revenue, with 5 companies' overseas revenue falling by more than 40% and only 4 companies' overseas revenue growing by more than 10% year on year.

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 the leak, because basically the global game companies are at a low valuation." A game industry analyst told the reporter that, for example, Ubisoft, which was invested by Tencent, its share price is at a low point since 2017. Activision Blizzard, which was previously acquired by Microsoft, also ran into difficulties. "Excellent game companies are scarce targets in the world, and large companies happen to have sufficient cash, so it is reasonable for both parties to combine at the moment." Analysts said.

The idea of Zuiweng is not to drink. The acquisition of head game studios by giants is regarded by the industry as a "card battle" before the arrival of the "meta universe". "These giants do not buy game studios for short-term financial investment, or even for their existing products, but for their profound technology accumulation, which is necessary for the future meta universe." A game designer believed that the immersion required by the meta universe could not be separated from a large number of sophisticated interactive technology support.

Taking the common "sense of attack" in games as an example, the above designer further introduced that "immersive experience will definitely involve these interactions, which is exactly the core technology of some foreign established manufacturers." It is reported that some foreign established game studios have tens of thousands of pages of technical guidance in this regard, while there is still a big gap between the domestic technology accumulation in related fields and that abroad. "If we can cooperate with these manufacturers and share relevant technologies through acquisition and other means, we will certainly greatly improve the speed of international trade development of domestic manufacturers."