Reasons for sluggish income growth in mobile gaming markets

Whether you believe it or not, the current domestic hand tour industry is growing up trouble.

Both major hand-travel platforms have seen some signs of slowing growth in 2014. According to Qihoo 360 earnings, 360 of the second quarter of the game business-related value-added services revenue growth slowed to 17.2%, and the first quarter of the income is the chain growth of 58.2%. Another giant, Tencent's second-quarter hand travel income of 3 billion, a quarter of 1.8 billion, continued to maintain a large growth, but Tencent's third-quarter mobile game revenue expectations are flat.

According to the statistics of the game working committees, the second quarter, the domestic mobile game income growth of 17.2%, below the quarter of the quarterly web game 20.% Growth, has been the industry that the rapid growth of mobile games in the year seems to appear a certain degree of fatigue. What is the cause of this?

Reasons for sluggish income growth in mobile gaming markets

1 lack of high-quality high income products

Xu Zuori, 360, the joint chief financial officer, said at the earnings meeting

"360 games platform is mainly affected by content, if there is a new game release, user activity will be very high, paid users will increase, and if there is no new game, users may choose to wait for the arrival of new games." The release of the game is not under the control of Qihoo platform, the two quarter and three-quarter game update cycle is relatively long, until the fourth quarter, the new game release will be active again. ”

Xu Zuori also accidentally evaluated Tencent's hand tour mode, "Tencent's most of the revenue from its own research and development of the game, Tencent can control the speed of the release of the game." "In fact, for the whole market, not a lack of products, but the lack of high income products, from January to September, the situation, including 360, Tencent and other domestic channels to some extent, there is a lack of high income products, in addition to micro-credit games, The current monthly income of more than 30 million novice travel products this year only appeared 8.

In the case where the channel effective recommendation is limited, only the emergence of high income products, to maintain the entire market chain continued to grow at high speed, 2013 led to the rapid growth of the hand market is the result of the 60 balance tens monthly flow of income of the hand travel products, and in 2014, to maintain the high-speed chain growth is not tens of millions, But the tens of millions of-month water volume level of the main game, this difficulty is not to improve a little.

2 Income decline curve: product Aging

From the whole market, last year's tens products with the extension of operating time, there is a certain degree of income decline, the vast majority of China's hand travel products are "rapid income detonation, and then gradually decline" income curve, while the Japanese market hand-travel products are mostly showing gradual increase in income performance, resulting in the formation of this income curve reasons , it is because many domestic channels, in a short period of time to enable hand-travel products efficient access to users. Japan's popular products in the market "White cat plan" 1 million download amount of time to achieve a week or so, has broken the Japanese market record, and domestic products in a large number of channels of force, external market promotion can be achieved 1 days 300,000-500,000 times the download volume.

Take Tencent for example, Tencent's micro-credit game as early as a few months ago that launched the TOP20 income list accounted for 10 of the game, and in recent months, although Tencent has continued to launch new games, but has not added new games on the TOP20 income list, this partly shows that users continue to move between Tencent's products, With the attendant income migration, the phenomenon of user migration shows that the absolute growth of the current domestic hand users is not as much as imagined, or that there is a lack of segmented products to separate the user groups of different products.

How to continue to improve the overall income of the market?

In addition to relying on new users, as well as hand tour manufacturers continue to launch a high income game for exchange-rate growth, the current main platform to consider the following ways:

1 Improve distribution efficiency

How can we continue to increase the overall revenue of the market? In the case that the channel effective recommendation bit is limited, the distribution efficiency of the promotion channel becomes more and more important, the distribution efficiency has two key factors, the effective recommended digit quantity, and the single recommendation bit download quantity transforms.

Channel to enhance the distribution efficiency of the most significant performance, that is, each channel to the IP products, IP can effectively achieve the effect of increasing the list of downloads, before the game to download the product that completes the scale of user accumulation.

Another important point is to improve the list of guidance and conversion rate, how to better close to the needs of users, to provide effective conversion rankings, or new application recommendations, is the test of the focus of the operation of the various application stores fine. At present a more remarkable performance, is the application of the store media, 1 years ago, the list of application stores recommended format is mainly the ranking method, and in this year, more than one channel of mixed content recommended recommended methods, as well as the user's interest aggregation, hot aggregation of the recommended form of the game.

2 Improve distribution efficiency two times

The importance of two distribution, mainly reflected in the current high-frequency download users are still a small number of users, according to Newzoo report, currently 2/3 users in the U.S. market within one months did not download the application, and 7% of the active users completed 50% of the application download behavior, although the data for the United States regional data, But there is still a certain degree of such problems in the Chinese market: downloads are concentrated in a small number of users. Therefore, how to improve the downloads of products and the frequency of users ' downloads through two distributions is a new challenge to the channel.

The main two means of distribution at the present time, is mobile advertising, and large application distribution, large applications currently occupy more mobile users of the use of time, mainly focused on reading, entertainment, social, video and other applications, in the future to match the major application characteristics of the game products or will become a new batch production of medium-income products new sources. For the new mobile traffic entry competition, Tencent, 360 have taken the hatch and investment way to layout, Tencent in the country to establish a wide range of entrepreneurial base, and 360 recently announced a dandelion application direction of investment plans.

Two distribution of another means, is mobile advertising, from the eco-chain layout, Tencent in the application of Bao launched before the launch of a wide range of mobile advertising, widely used to play the role of two distribution, digest Tencent Internal advertising inventory, aggregation of Third-party mobile application of long tail flow, And in the recent 360 acquisition Mediav itself is a DSP, RTB advertising platform, the purpose is to increase the use of 360 internal advertising inventory.

Earlier, Tencent President Lau said, "The more games, users in the Tencent ecosystem stay longer." We have a game in China's top five of similar games. So the new game of Tencent's platform will only prolong the total length of the user's stay in the Tencent ecosystem. "This explanation is similar to the large application distribution, Tencent's goal is to pursue the use of hand-travel users in Tencent, while the large application distribution is to take into account the user in the entire distribution system download ratio."

3. Integrated flow distribution for detonating products

The mode of distribution of integrated form, mainly applicable to the channel alone products, or key brand products, compared to the mobile internet to the central, the integration of the test is a large-scale platform integration of its own flow, external flow capacity, the performance of integrated distribution is a short period of time to focus on a large amount of traffic on top of a single product, thus detonating hot This integration is different from the domestic distributor to buy a large number of brand advertising, but similar to Tencent, 360, the focus of its PC platform, mobile platform, a variety of flow portals, centralized release of flow value.

And this means the emergence of other medium and small channels in the distribution of the relative weakness, after all, there are multiple traffic portals, and even have a PC traffic access to the mobile platform is very few.

Relative to enhance the overall market income, the single generation of products on the growth of the individual platform is increasing the importance of quality products in the income by a large number of channels to eat the status quo, the platform to do the distributor IP authorized party, or even directly become CP, platform is not a small temptation.

4 Long tail market and overseas market

Domestic Hand Tour market has always been to 1, 2-line cities as the main income driven, and with the increase in the popularity of the smartphone, the user in the long tail of cock silk users are generating income value, this to Skye in the second quarter of 2014, the income of intelligent machine revenue to 77.8% as a sign, It is worth noting that the sky Smart machine revenue 70% for stand-alone game revenue, Skye to win the Magic weapon is the application of the distribution sank to 3, 4-line city, using the way to push with the country's 40,000 operators business hall and social stores, in the online distribution, the main domestic application store has its strong position, and in stand-alone and cock silk Android, ground promotion and cooperation with small and medium-sized mobile phone manufacturers is an important way to cover the long tail of the user group.

Synchronized with the domestic market growth, as well as overseas hand tour market, and currently Tencent as the representative of the Chinese Internet companies are large-scale overseas investment layout, including Ali, Tencent, 360 and other listed companies in the direction of overseas investment from platform-type applications, to game developers, to IP, These investment activities are to better grasp the current global growth of mobile internet trends, while seizing the future of game products revenue.

5 Last resort: Pull up ARPU

To promote the overall income of the market, the last trick is to pull up the ARPU value, for Tencent's choice is in the product type, from mild to moderate change, that is, effectively enhance the Tencent platform hand Tour products of the overall income. For other channels, under the pressure of performance growth, the potential demand for ARPU products is fermenting, which puts higher demands on the operating and paying design of rival products, and the process will become increasingly irreversible in the absence of high income products.

Overall, because of the escalation of competition and the desire for continued high growth, hand tour market is gradually stepping into the "high pressure normalization" of the state, the more rely on IP promotion transformation will not be able to leave the IP, channel and CP of the IP is addicted to the craving, addiction can not be separated, and thus have to increase the investment in products. And the channel competition means from 2012, 2013 compete the application store distribution quantity, rises to competes the ecosystem chain and the channel fine operation Stage, the channel competition means diversification will redefine the distribution market each channel ranking and the share.