Game consoles face triple door: industrial chain vacuum Time fragmentation

Intermediary transaction SEO diagnosis Taobao guest Cloud host technology Hall

Tencent Science and technology Louboutin Pool June 8 Report

Following the May 22 Microsoft in Shanghai FTA registered wholly-owned enterprises "Microsoft Gaming Entertainment Equipment (Shanghai) Co., Ltd." to obtain the business license, Sony also announced at the end of May with the Oriental Pearl, a wholly-owned subsidiary signed a joint venture contract, in Shanghai FTA jointly funded two joint ventures, respectively responsible for production, Marketing Sony Gaming machine hardware and software and services.

Unlike other personal terminal Equipment market competition, the game machine market currently only has Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo three companies in the world to carry out fight, as the two companies will soon start business in China, the Chinese mainland to block the 14-year gaming machine market will also be formally opened.

It is reported that, although China's Ministry of Culture and the seven ministries in 2000 to prohibit the production and sale of game consoles began to block the game machine market, but before that there are few overseas video games officially into China precedent, mainly piracy as the core of the civil forces in the promotion, The mainstream host game industry chain in other parts of the world is still a vacuum in the mainland, meaning that the two companies of Sony and Microsoft need to be educated in the market after their entry into China.

At the same time, industry insiders pointed out that the global market, PC Internet games and mobile phone games suffered two waves of shock, the host game has already entered a weak period, especially in the Chinese market, with the living room entertainment time and the fragmentation of personal entertainment time, host game is difficult to attract the main mainstream game consumer groups.

Content industry chain vacuum difficult to cultivate

Although Microsoft and Sony are waiting for the 14 to finally usher in the lifting of the game consoles in mainland China, but that does not mean that two companies will have a new outbreak in the gaming machine market, where mainstream gaming consoles and software have been in the gray zone for the past more than 10 years, with no barrier to sales in China, The biggest problem in the Chinese market is not the host and the game itself, but the vacuum of the entire industrial chain.

With the lifting of the ban on game policy in the FTA, companies including ZTE and Huawei have issued home entertainment hosts based on Android, but these products cannot compete with Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo's game consoles in hardware configuration or game content.

Industry insiders evaluation, if wholly foreign-owned companies can engage in the production and sale of game machine products, then Chinese enterprises in this market can only play the role of CP (content Provider), after years of blockade, Chinese enterprises have no ability to go to the upper reaches of the game industry.

In fact, the domestic mainstream game companies are to end the tour, the start of a page tour and a hand tour, the few suppliers that can offer the game content to Sony and Microsoft, means that for a long time, the game consoles sold in China will be hard to come up with the products produced by Chinese gaming companies, which will further affect the popularity of host games in China.

Young group game Time Fragmentation

Compared with the vacuum of the host game content industry chain, the bigger problem for Sony and Microsoft may be the fragmentation of the game time for young groups of mainstream consumers, and in a sense the development of the domestic game market from the end to the page and then to the hand, is in agreement with this trend, The fragmentation of game time requires that the content of the game be felt anywhere, and that it is difficult to do so.

In fact, not only the heavy host games, including large-scale end-game is also difficult in the mainstream consumption of time fragmentation of the situation to survive, according to Guotai's research report that 2013 China's game industry sales revenue reached 83.17 billion yuan, an increase of 38%. One end of the tour, the page tour, social games and hand tour accounted for 64.5%, 15.4%, 6.5% and 13.5%, stand-alone games accounted for 0.1%.

One of the fastest growth in the game is matching the consumer fragmentation of the time of the mobile games, according to the 2013 "China Mobile Chess Game industry Research Report", the 2013 Intelligent Terminal Game market scale growth reached 371.1%, With users reaching 145 million, the entire gaming industry is moving from PCs to intelligent terminals.

How to adapt to the needs of young people will be the most difficult for Sony and Microsoft to solve the problem, in the absence of localized content, trying to keep them in the living room would be a difficult thing to think, in fact, in the developed areas of the game machine market, the problem of the decline in the rate of game play has not been resolved.

The living room war is about to begin

Even the living room, which is seen as the main battleground, has poured into a growing number of competitors, not only with smart TVs and set-top boxes, but even routers, which, unlike Microsoft's Sony, see the living room, especially television, as a home entrance, trying to subvert the traditional landscape with Internet services.

Although these players are far from being able to compete with Microsoft Sony in their game functions, the rich and colorful video programs give them some competitive power. Interestingly, the video terminal, which has the highest boot rate in the United States, is an Xbox, but that doesn't mean that Microsoft or Sony will have a competitive advantage in video programs, because there are policy distractions beyond technology.

2011, Sarft 181th clearly stipulates that the Internet television integration agencies to choose the cooperation of Internet TV terminal products, can only connect CNTV Internet TV Integrated platform, if you want to access the Internet, must cooperate with licensees. At present, Microsoft Sony has not announced the Internet service-related status.

For Sony and Microsoft, the license to get into China is just the beginning of a policy, whether it is to nurture the market, or to attract young people, or participate in the living room war, are difficult challenges, this block 14 years after the opening of the closed area, how much value is still an unknown.