Frequent "overweight" video game broadcast platform set off the tide of burning money

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"Burning Money" in the internet industry is not unusual, with the continued fiery competition games, electric competition games live platform is also regarded as one of the most burning money industry.

"Bandwidth and copyright accounts for about 80% of operating costs, several billion a year." "A game live platform related to the head of the first financial daily revealed that in addition to broadband costs, some of the electricity competition broadcast platform in the copyright and host Rob also" frequently overweight ", some of the game Live star contract price reached 3,000,001 years, and this trend is still rising.

"Now the game live industry is a bit like the early video industry, see the market opportunity people are crazy to smash the money, the competition killed on the line, but actually did not take into account the bandwidth, server, artificial and other electric competition for the huge cost of live." YY Executive Vice President Cao Jin said to reporters.

But the "market" may be the most direct driving force behind the game live industry, this year, Google and Amazon for 1 billion of dollars in cost competition for foreign games live web site Twitch case is often taken by the industry to illustrate how the future of the market is so vigorous. And in the capital War and "Market Temptation", financing, burning flow, refinancing, and then burning the flow of most of the game live platform has to choose the development routines.

"Not to do so may disappear in a few months." The above game platform director told reporters.

Burn the money "gather popularity"

"The eyeball or the celebrity is reflected more vividly in the game live platform." "The above game broadcast platform responsible for the reporter said.

He gave an example to reporters, the last time Wanda Group chairman of the son, DOTA2 IG Electronic sports Club founder constructed appeared in a live platform of the commentary, the platform of the number of live between the instant breakthrough 240,000. And some celebrities on the platform on the microblogging, even will trigger 10 times times the traditional microblogging fan reprint and comments.

"The whole industry is growing fast, and without the popularity of anchors and the lack of audience content, the platform may soon be forgotten," he said. "To provide content for the live platform," said Sun Boven, Shanghai Seven-Huang Information Technology chairman told reporters, now several game platform companies are still in the "Enclosure era", many people think that as long as the popularity has been growing can be profitable.

And in order to retain users, many manufacturers since last year, "heavy" digging angle to explain the anchor, according to Sun Boven introduced, some game narrator between different platforms job-hopping, the value can reach millions of. And some of the original play good professional players also poured into the industry, while breeding a lot of specialized training star anchors of the organization team.

"If the narrator is more expensive than the players, will anyone be willing to play?" Faced with such a phenomenon, Cao Jin to the "first financial daily" that some companies want to rely on star anchors and star commentators to drive traffic, but this is driving up the industry in the price of anchors, and not conducive to the healthy development of the industry. "And a lot of people don't think about the cost of bandwidth at all. "Cao Jin said.

At home, bandwidth costs are high. Access to each k bandwidth, need to IDC room or CDN to pay for telecommunications or unicom. The eradication of the industry to calculate the actual live instance of the game, provided to the user 800K rate of clarity, if the platform 100,000 people online, is 80G bandwidth, 1G every year 250,000, then the need to spend 20 million, because the personal live still cannot use peer-to-peer delay, so the bandwidth cost is very high.

"The current cost of broadband is roughly 40% of the overall operating cost of operating an electric competition platform, and the cost of content including copyrights, competitions and teams is between 30%~40% and 20% per cent of the company's operating costs," he said. Some companies also need to be in the promotion to pay about 20% of the cost, do down very burning money. Cao Jin told reporters.

But even so, many companies are still investing heavily. A live gaming platform company's executives privately told reporters that taking advantage of the capital market is very hot when the snowball roll up, is now the only way to survive.

"In fact, we are also afraid of bubbles, but the game industry is the most afraid of a period of time there is no sound, so we have to do." "said the senior executives.

Copy twitch mode?

From the business model, most of the domestic game live platform is still groping and mutual plagiarism stage, has not formed a profitable path.

But a previous Google takeover has made many people see hope.

July 27, Google is acquiring game video live platform Twitch News, the former bid for 1 billion U.S. dollars. The news is a source of intense concern in the industry, Twitch is the world's largest gaming website and community, where gamers can live their video games online, like Netflix or Hulu, to live the game online.

In recent days, Amazon announced a comprehensive offer of more than 1 billion dollars in Monday, defeating Google to complete its twitch acquisition, the biggest takeover case in Amazon's history.

According to the reporter understands, the Twitch business model is very simple, the player uses the software to transmit own game live picture to Twitch, according to the game category and the audience quantity to the direct broadcast channel to carry on the order; The host can earn revenue based on the audience's subscriptions and advertisements. Last year, Twitch's monthly active subscribers reached 45 million, viewers watched video on Twitch for more than 12 billion minutes a month, and more than 1 million users a month streamed video games through the Twitch platform, making their peak traffic more than Facebook and Hulu.

But Cao Jin to reporters that the pure Twitch model in China may not work, the advertising model in China is more difficult.

"China's advertisers lack the credibility of the effectiveness of the indicators, in the United States system this way is not bad, but in China, especially in the internet era, games, click, download, display, registration, many links can be cheated." Cao Jin that the domestic short-term and not suitable for the advertising model profit.

In addition, Twitch is the user to actively upload, using software to their own game live screen upload to Twitch, while the main domestic or mainly well-known players, this part of the cost is very large. At the same time, Twitch's bandwidth costs in the United States are negligible. Twitch has built the computer room and the state of the fiber, while in the states and municipalities, access to at&t these carriers are free, in the United States if you have a large number of content, telecommunications operators are very willing to open access to bandwidth, because users will pay for video more broadband package, Content and telecoms operators here are mutually surplus.

"The chances of Twitch are all seen, but the possibility of localization is slim." Cao Jin to reporters that the current domestic broadcast platform is the most likely way is to charge users.

It is understood that the current game of the company's main revenue from a number of aspects, props, ads, quizzes and a variety of game manufacturers, peripherals vendors to cooperate income. YY at present on the props developed blood bottles, Lancen and other products, advertising has a live buffer page patch ads and other advertising resources to sell revenue, while the quiz is based on gold beans, silver bean quiz Divided into income, another live broadcast platform, the use of props for gold, there are guessing links, and dou fish also have fish balls and other props.

"YY Game Live trial data bring great confidence." The entire data as well as the user market, each month's active degree reaches 45 million, the handset end is also 10 million above, these all gradually appears in this direction is still good. "Cao Jin said.

In terms of data, although the income of YY online games has only increased by 9%, the game-related game live revenue is 31.1 million yuan, up from the same period last year 9.1 million yuan growth of 243.2%.

However, Cao Jin frankly, at present also just groping out some things, the game live or rational input.

He said that the game is not rely on the broadcast of copyright, support flow, financing, acquisition of this cycle, so the current by burning money to hit the road is not feasible.

But what can be seen is that the daily active users of the various platforms still continue to climb at a high percentage rate. "And that will attract capital, and for a long time capital will be in favor of the industry." Sun Boven told reporters.