The mobile game market is developing rapidly and the capital is favored investment is like smashing golden eggs

When Le NET CEO Xiao Yongquan is in a good mood recently. As the first mobile gaming platform in China, the head of the company, his website just has 2 monthly income of more than 10 million mobile games, and in the last year, the monthly income reached 3 million of the product is still rare. Xiao Yongquan told South all reporters, "the first half of this year mobile games (especially mobile gaming) income growth is very fast, in the outbreak of the situation." ”

"Outbreak situation" behind the investment institutions in the "fuel": in the first half of the 20 million U.S. dollars when the network completed a B-round financing, the Royal Joint Capital Injection mobile gaming company Excellence 5 million U.S. dollars, the Qing branch venture to invest millions of dollars a round of financing to mobile game development Calvi, Hand Tour company Palm interesting technology May 2012 Impact Shenzhen Gem success, such as investment and financing events occurred.

In the PC-side game, the web game market facing saturation, competition in the white-hot situation, the game industry's investment focus has shifted to the field of mobile gaming. Domestic online games giants also dare not slack off, or independent research and development of mobile phone games, or the acquisition of Hand tour development team, a strong cut into the hands of the market. In "Angry Birds" "Fruit Ninja" behind, let a VC and entrepreneurs covet the hand tour market is hot or overheating?

Single Game vs online game

Who doesn't like to play games?

In the circle of users, make traffic, mobile Internet finally began to achieve large-scale profit, the leading "flow of the machine" is the mobile game. In mid-August this year, the Chinese version of Forbes magazine released the list of 30 of the most lucrative mobile internet companies in the 2011 year, with 11 of them in companies with more than 50 million of them gaming companies, and gaming companies already occupy half of the list, combined with platform companies that carry out gaming operations.

"The mobile gaming industry has the opportunity to appear as a big, nine-city gaming company," he said. "This is the judgment of Duyonbo, managing director of Huaxing Capital, said in an interview with reporters in South China that mobile games are going beyond client games and web games to become new investment hotspots."

began to develop mobile phone games, more and more entrepreneurial team, Gobi Venture Partners Dong found, "on the one hand, the original to do client games, web game company transformation to do mobile phone games; In addition, from these companies to do business to do mobile phone games are also very many people." "The new mobile gaming companies, some of the powerful team, not only watch the mobile phone games, but also the development of Cross-platform games."

The friend of the Innovation Workshop is a development company focused on Cross-platform gaming. The start-up company currently has 70 supposedly people, divided into 3 studios, each studio is responsible for a use of HTML5 technology, the game has been developed "Dawn Empire", "glorious record" and other Cross-platform games.

Kai-Fu Lee into the Innovation factory before, Lei Friend founder Huangho is Tencent's product manager, is responsible for QQ browser and other product development. October 2010, he headed north to Beijing to start a business. Before entrepreneurship, Huangho and Kai-fu Lee to know, until he decided to resign, two people "each other is looking for each other, like to talk about marriage." At present, Lei friends abandoned the development of the domestic market, "our income is mainly from overseas, domestic (income status) is not particularly good, so we have all the energy in the overseas market, as a start-up company, we would rather be more focused," Huangho to the South reporters explained.

The company was founded at the beginning, Lei friends put their energies on a single game, but soon suffered surplus problems. The games they produce all adopt HTML5 technology, the user can visit the webpage to be able to play, cannot obtain the income through the paid downloading client. Not only they, the general game developers also found that a single game is the root "difficult to gnaw bones."

Tencent Game Vice President Lu Peng that standing in the practitioner's point of view, stand-alone game is difficult to do. Domestic users do not pay to download the habit, piracy is very serious, developers are very difficult to receive money, "you see the domestic market, even the Angry Birds," Fruit Ninja "from the game can be almost negligible income. ”

In the face of no paid download habits of domestic users, single game to make money, only through advertising and other means of display. However, single game ARPU (Average revenues per user average income) is very low, hand tour manufacturers must accumulate tens other users, in order to obtain a more substantial income. UC Excellent as chief operating Officer Zhushunti told South all reporters, "assuming that a game has a huge user group, but also not through the game itself, this is a paradox, it will not be able to do so large user groups, because the size of the user, the need to promote the cost is also expensive."

Mobile phone games can continue to train the PC online user props to pay habits, to achieve surplus. Lu Peng reporters to the south, Tencent hand on the platform, the income of the top 10 online games accounted for the majority. "Online games, in comparison, will be more suitable for the Chinese environment to do." However, Lu Peng that the current domestic market may not have a single monthly income of more than tens of millions of smartphone game products, "some people say that they have a single product income tens of millions, I think there are some marketing needs in the inside." We are also practitioners, also doing product operations. Add up the Android +ios+ios jailbreak platform (income) over 5 million, and this product is indeed there. ”

The hand swims the platform needs "all-around"?

Compared to the game itself, the capital market is more optimistic about the development of hand-tour platform. Hand tour industry chain, as the traffic and user owners, the hand platform to bear the profit risk than a single game developers a lot smaller, which means that more profits can be obtained.

Zhushunti revealed that at present, Tencent is the most users of the hands of the platform, UC hand tour platform second runner-up, with about 50 million users. In addition, the hand Tour platform 360, 91, when the music network. Tencent, UC, 360 platform companies, with their own market influence and the mobile Internet access control, quickly accumulated a lot of mobile gaming users.

Compared with these large platforms, since the beginning of the 2004, when the Music network, and 3G portal, le message equivalent of the first batch of mobile Internet test water. After graduating from Hunan University, Xiao Yongquan founder once in Dongguan, Samsung mobile phone manufacturing plant work, when he decided to resign, China Mobile treasure business just launched, for mobile phone players to download color news, games, and so on, when it is the SP hot, "but there is no interaction between mobile game users, At that time held such a judgment, did a BBS forum, Xiao Yongquan Forum gradually assembled China's first batch of mobile phone game players.

South all reporter to inquire Xiao Yongquan How to treat the difference that when the music net and tecent hand swims platform, he said that when the network only do mobile phone game platform This one thing, will do more professional, "Our users belong to know how to play the game, Tencent users belong to the ' small white ' users," Tencent tends to do users easy to play games, When the network pay attention to meet the diverse needs of users of the game.

Can this distinction be successful? Zhushunti reporters said that the mobile gaming platform is the only indicator of success, is the number of users. CP (game content Provider) when choosing a mobile gaming platform, you must consider "can you make money from this platform?" "This is related to the number of users on the gaming platform, especially the amount of paid players." From this point of view, the hands of the platform in order to strive for high-quality pay users, must win a good game content.

UC in the fight for quality game content is quite strong. Zhushunti revealed that the industry will be a large branch of UC as the primary partner, through the UC browser to promote, UC established a mobile gaming field of the largest promotional network. In this way, UC can meet the flow of multiple product line supply, and then widely layout game product line, solve the user "tune" problem, retain paid users.

Zhushunti said, do mobile phone game platform, must be "all-around" to survive, flow, products, promotion is essential, "when the network may start earlier, but the continuous operation, the product richness, they are not too satisfied."

Ning, a partner in the venture capital, simply believes that mobile gaming platforms have no investment value. Platform is too difficult, need good channels or good opportunities, such as Tencent, from the chat tool to start, slowly become a platform, Baidu to do search engines, play into a platform. No one, on the platform to do a successful.

However, in March 2012, when the network still successfully completed by the soft silver tournament rich, qiming Venture, Pan Valley venture capital and so on with the investment of the 20 million-dollar B-round financing. Hand Tour market is still in the early stage, when the music network is still good, can not be denied that it faces a lot of challenges in the future. "Do hand travel platform involves competing with a large platform for users, contention traffic." However, these ' big guys ' themselves busy things more, will give these focus on mobile games platform to keep the opportunity, they want to seize such a window of time, quickly grow up, "This is the Duyonbo of the music network under the judgment."

At present, the profit of the hand tour platform mainly by helping the developer to operate the game, obtains the partition. UC is divided into 55 points, when the music net for 46 points, game developers can get more than 10%. When the traffic is not as good as Tencent, UC and other platform-level companies, divided into a more honest.

Lu Peng declined to disclose the specific proportion of developers, he told the south are reporters, deduction of promotion, operation, such as Tencent Hand Tour platform to bear the cost, "from the net income point of view, developers take no less than Tencent." "Lu Peng that the opportunity of hand-tour platform is still there," on the one hand, Tencent user base is huge, to take into account the diversity of user needs, on the other hand, Tencent will also be committed to the quality of hand-tour to meet the needs of the core users of the game. And for relatively small platforms, they may be concerned about a number of subdivision areas to do, I think there is such a space to complement each other. ”

Investing in a hand is like hitting a golden egg.

For mobile gaming platform, they pursue the emergence of quality games, investment standards are also based on this. For early entrepreneurs, Duyonbo believes that with Tencent, UC and other strategic investors, traffic and user-import support compared to financial support alone, more valuable.

And for investment funds, game companies like "snobbish Ghost", making the game industry investment is very difficult. Investors in the game before the official release, it is not easy to determine whether the product can be successful, "(game) is the creative industry, like giants such as cattle companies, their" journey "is very successful, the second game has been tepid. They have been very experienced, let alone, investors in the product before, look at your demo, ideas, planning, I think this game can be successful, I will certainly be able to vote, do not dare to have this judgment, "Duyonbo told the South reporters.

However, if a game product is released, the market responds well and the developer can make a profit immediately, the developers ' demand for capital and the expectation of their own valuations will rise. Duyonbo revealed that at present China's overseas listed gaming companies, more than four or five times times the P/E ratio, "from the investor point of view, he has to give himself enough space, which often with the company in the valuation expectations of a certain contrast, may not be able to talk about." For the game enterprise, some game enterprises do well, do not necessarily need to finance. ”

However, none of this has affected the investment enthusiasm of the Ning Capital, who has invested 2 million yuan in a game development team, giving them 3 development opportunities. The team's first game on line is tepid and is currently developing a second model. "The second to third game has to be one," Ning said. I am very optimistic about this piece, investment mobile phone game like smashing golden eggs, hit one, the failure of those can be covered, I will not only vote this one home. ”