Gree China Survey: Lost Control and Lost Localization

On May 14, Greentown, the Japanese mobile social gaming company, announced the closure of its Chinese subsidiary, which is less than two years after Gree's Chinese subsidiary was established.

At this time, its research and development of "Dark Abyss" has just achieved good results in the North American market, while another "honor journey" is also an emergency closed beta among them.

"There was not any sign before the company closed," said one insider at Gree China. Many employees in the latest WeChat WeChat update, also said that this period of time is very busy, in the "honor journey" to do the final debugging. All signs appear to be methodical.

Just earlier this year, Gree China also plans to fully roll out its markets in Hong Kong and Taiwan as well as in mainland China, and the HR team is still rapidly expanding its presence in the market.

When Gree China just started, the company suddenly announced the closure, which aroused much speculation in the industry.

Financial reasons into a fuse

There are reports rumors that Gree China's closure of the direct fuse of its development "honor journey" in the beta of several platforms data is not good. Gree Chinese company lasted 40,000 lasted 40,000 mobile phone social games cost 40 million, but after the effect is not satisfactory.

According to the general speculation from the outside world, the financial reason is Gree's direct reason for shutting down Chinese companies. In July and July, the latest quarterly earnings release of Gree, Gree decisively closed down Chinese companies that have not yet made any profit, in order to explain to shareholders a better earnings report.

Gree Chinese company was established in October 2011, in the past two years, Gree China did not really create a very successful game in the market. The same is from Japan, and DeNA is also based on mobile social networking company in China, although the development is not good at home, but the promotion of the platform of the dream treasure Valley also has some success, but also localization of some overseas successful works, like " Bahamut Wrath "and previously released" blood brothers "and so on.

Also in the field of mobile games in China has also risen a large number of games, such as "My name is MT", "find your sister" and so on, these games have achieved great success in the short term, the user downloads of these two games Already billions of dollars, its monthly revenue also exceeded ten million. Gree China contrast, dwarfed.

The Chinese team did not show any achievements. This is in stark contrast to the expectations of top Japanese companies in China. It is understood that when the Chinese company began to form, the Japanese headquarters sent a Japanese developer in the field of the game entitled "the god of development," trump card developers and by virtue of the game "Creek fishing" famous development team formed the Chinese company Development backbone.

Japan headquarters hope that the Chinese R & D team to develop successful products for the world, and the development of new products will also first choose to promote in North America. However, there are many problems during the "Honor Journey" during the beta test, which undoubtedly consumes high-level patience.

Insiders believe that two years for a mobile game company is already considered a relatively long time, "Now the mobile game team, can not wait to have a 100 million into six months to produce a finished product." In the past two years Time, Gree China has neither successful products nor established a platform.

Chinese companies, "no access to gas" is the main reason

"Gree's rapid development and its success in the short term have given him a high degree of confidence that has caused young high-level decision-makers to over believe their previous practices and their failure to take the initiative to adapt to the Chinese market environment, which is an important reason for their failure." An industry source said .

It is understood that Gree Chinese companies are basically high-level Japanese nationals, and even speakers in China are all Japanese, only a high level in China.

In internal management, the top Japanese executives are not assured of Chinese employees in their bones. It has taken a centralized management approach, and even taxi taxi costs, need to be reported to the CEO layer for approval.

For the internal management of such, for the external market strategy, the Japanese executives believe that they have more successful experience in Japan, and are not willing to understand and adapt to the special circumstances of the Chinese market.

In China, the Internet's "grassroots culture" and "reeling culture" are deeply rooted in the bone marrow, which affects China's Internet products, marketing, channels and business models.

Many Chinese Internet companies have been doing more successful because the main reason is very flexible, constantly trying to make mistakes, all sorts of methods Qi battle, "cats can catch the mouse is a good cat"; the other is the ground gas, all Internet companies often meet and exchange In the rapidly changing Internet environment can quickly make adjustments.

For example, "find your sister," the game name is very fit the most popular Internet elements, reeling style, funny, Funny, is its main magic weapon, in order to meet the Chinese user preferences, and even joined the Aoi in the background.

In product design, taking into account the mutual contest between husband and wife or friends, "Find Your Sister" launched a single dual-frequency competition mode, lose the dishes at dinner or dinner, this is undoubtedly very authentic.

However, Gree China did not do this, it did not participate in any local industry organizations in China, and rarely communicate with Chinese industry professionals. This "arrogance" led to many of its mistakes in decision-making, especially in the promotion of the game.

China's game market has just emerged, the market is unstable, many games in the early need to rely on a large number of companies throwing money, carry out overwhelming publicity, it is possible to come to the fore.

Gree China to promote a new game, the first low-key on the first few platforms, test users reflect, if the user response is good, and then put a lot of publicity efforts. In China, this model is undoubtedly the end.

Of course, there are many people in Gree China that are aware of this shortcoming, but the lack of the right to speak has led to more and more similar problems.

Japan's strategic headquarters is unclear is the underlying reason

"Gree was the unmanned king in the era of feature phones, but in the days when the market turned to smartphones, Gree did not know how to play it," said one senior Internet source.

Gree is developing in the era of the functional machine by mobile social, the operation of the game platform with the current era of intelligent machines is very different.

In the era of the functional machine, the game platform is in the form of a WAP website. As long as an enterprise runs its own mobile website platform well, the enterprise can control the customer. In the era of the smart machine, the APP mode becomes the dominant mode, and the enterprise seizes the users The core is to build such a platform APP Store.

However, in Japan, it is almost impossible for a company to establish a platform similar to Google play because of the tight control of Japanese telecom giants in these markets. Therefore, the loss of control of users, Gree headquarters in the development of intelligent machines on the uncertain.

To China, the policy laws also allow the establishment of the APP Store. As usual, this is a completely new opportunity for Gree. However, the Chinese APP Store market is even more intense. Gree first chose to cooperate with some Tencent, but due to the fact that insiders do not believe in cooperation with the Chinese, both are very strong and Gree China eventually chose to do it on its own. This undoubtedly dug a huge pit for themselves.

Gree's wobbling for the Chinese market, as evidenced in earlier discourses inside and outside of Gree, said when its founders interviewed the media earlier this year, "We need to do while looking, we have not found it yet The winning weapon. "From the results, Gree China did not find a good way to adapt to overseas markets.

Gree's withdrawal from China is not without merit. The team's internal implementation, as well as the team atmosphere has its own merits. For a game as early as possible on the line, often take the initiative to work overtime without exception. Even when Gree China reclaims its employees' computers, the first reaction of employees is: What should I do if I work overtime tonight?

Two days after the closure of the Chinese company, some employees posted on Weibo. "Dark Abyss", a game developed by the Chinese team, rose to 236 in the United States without any promotion. The upward trend is very good. This makes a lot of effort to pay the other team members all sighed sighed.