Host game to decline? Moving impact disaster into the living room center

Intermediary transaction SEO diagnosis Taobao guest Cloud host technology Hall

[summary] The user is migrating to the mobile game, the foreground of the host game is not optimistic.

Smartphones are replacing game consoles as a new favorite of people's entertainment

Tencent Science and Technology Fan Xiaodong September 17 Report

The 2014 Tokyo video game show will be held tomorrow in Tokyo, the world's second-largest game show, next to the US E3 game show, last year recorded a record of more than 270,000 people entering the pavilion, but over the past year, it has been difficult to reproduce as the market environment facing host games has deteriorated.

The launch of Sony PS 4 and Microsoft's Xbox One once injected new vigor into the market, but the Nintendo Wii U's Waterloo in the past two years has sounded a wake-up call for the future of the host game.

"Host games will eventually disappear, even if Nintendo launches the next generation of better hosts, it doesn't matter." Five years later, the impact of the mainframe will be negligible. Pachter, general manager of Wedbush, a U.S. market research firm, says that around 1.7 billion smartphones worldwide are far higher than game consoles and users are migrating to mobile games, with smartphones and tablets becoming a new generation of hosts.

Wired magazine has also published a paper saying that mobile gaming has become one of the most important activities on mobile devices, depending on the amount of time and money mobile users spend on the game, and as people increasingly use mobile devices to play games, the future of game consoles as an independent hardware platform is not optimistic.

The rise of mobile intelligent terminals is influenced by many aspects, in addition to changing user habits, encroaching on the players more leisure and game time, but also caused the fission of the industrial chain, such as game developers began to move to the hand market transfer, game publishers want to find out from the host hardware manufacturers to extract the new channels.

In addition, the popularity of Internet TV, set-top box will also erode the market space of host games, TV games by the major TV manufacturers, internet companies as in addition to the video outside the core of the breakthrough direction. TV manufacturers can bypass the host, directly into the game market, and on the basis of the user has a high-end mainframe incomparable advantages. For example, in China this year TCL has with Jingdong, game business Gameloft start TCL game Eco-circle Strategic Alliance, and launch game TV.

From the business model, the host game area to build up the industry chain is also facing adjustment. It is worth noting that even with a new generation of hosts on sale, real software sales are still declining, most players do not directly contribute to the game revenue. Market research firm Wedbush data show that 2008 Western real game software market revenue scale of 22 billion U.S. dollars, 2013 this number into 11 billion U.S. dollars, a sharp decline of 50%, on the other hand, digital sales have developed rapidly, so from the business model, Host games need to really revolutionize the way users search and buy games on the mainframe.

In the face of all these disadvantages, in Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft, the idea of the host is not only limited to the game, want to take the opportunity to create a living room multimedia experience, taking over the future of the user living room digital life.

The failure attempt of the body sense game

The poor performance of Nintendo's latest-generation host, Wii U, has directly led to the company's three-year losses, forcing it to cut sales forecasts for the previous fiscal year from 9 million to 2.8 million, down nearly 70%.

In fact, the WII U was launched before PS 4 and Xbox One, and through the price reduction and game bundling and other measures to promote, and the Nintendo in the next generation of game host defeated the main reason, is the Wii u from performance to experience transformation, equipped with touch screen handle, the main body sense game concept.

Wii u do not play performance cards and change to play the user experience card, hope that the use of the line to enhance the experience of many people to become the first choice of entertainment, but relative to the previous generation of mainframe, the WII u in the hardware and no breakthrough innovation and upgrade, far less than the subsequent competitive product innovation.

Similarly, Microsoft was initially committed to promoting the concept of Xbox One and Kinect integration so many game developers began to believe that the game would shine on Microsoft's next-generation consoles, but in May, Microsoft announced it would start selling the Xbox One host, which does not bundle Kinect. At the same time, the price of the simple version of the model also fell to 399 U.S. dollars.

While it is widely accepted that this is a good choice for boosting Xbox One sales, some game developers are disappointed that the body-feeling game developer Zoe Mode Studio believes the Xbox One solution to the Kinect is a disaster.

After all, Microsoft's changes have made the prospect of a body-feeling game blurred again with the Kinect's decoupling, considering that it is hard for more users to take the initiative to buy a new Kinect, and that the developer's enthusiasm for continued creative work has cooled. In fact, after the Xbox One listing for half a year, there is still no real body sense game listing, which means that the early players in the hands of the Kinect almost completely idle, can only afford some video chat, facial unlock, voice command such basic functions, the core value is completely not reflected.

What can be expected is that the game host in the body sense of the game on a short trial, the next core of the competition is still to return to the performance and parameters of the dispute, and for game manufacturers, the host platform for the heavy game development cycle long, investment costs, development difficulties and the threshold is still high, Can not attract more developers to create more personalized games for users, which compared to the fiery hand tour and PC game research and development market, in the competition will obviously be at a disadvantage.

Occupy the central position of living room

In many people's view, the game host transformation of the road can only be extended from the game, the host as a Home media box Center for sales, to provide television, film, digital library, equipment inheritance and other services, has been extended to other areas to carry out a broader development.

Nintendo has been in the direction of the expansion of the FC host a number of multimedia attempts, and in the Wii U to make bold challenges, but repeatedly encounter the market cold shoulder. The Xbox's success is also due to Microsoft's positioning of its products in pure gaming consoles, while Microsoft's Xbox One is trying to integrate operating systems, games, televisions and other multimedia entertainment as a selling point for its home entertainment center.

However, it is clear that the above companies can successfully transform the host to the living room multimedia terminals face many difficulties, as we all know, the history of the game host to achieve the success of the game is focused on the games, to multimedia. As noted above, although Microsoft wants to expand it into a somatosensory terminal through Kinect, the plan now seems to have no sign of success.

From the video service, the Xbox in China and other regions are bound to be subject to regulatory restrictions. A senior executive at the company revealed to Tencent that the main function of the Xbox One, which is on sale, is focused on the game and has not yet received policy support for video content. Of course, in the process of transition to the living room Center, the fierce competition from the Internet TV and box market is another important challenge that the game host faces.