What is the longevity of American and European hand tour?

According to the former Newzoo released data, 2014 Global hand market is expected to reach 25 billion U.S. dollars, and by region distribution, the top three were Japan, the United States and China.

Compared to three markets, what we can find is that in the iOS rankings, the U.S. list is the smallest change, I believe many people have the question, why the U.S. income list remains unchanged? Let's take a look at what the game is in the PA list, overall, compared to the domestic market hand-tour distribution, Research and development of the mainstream, in North America's hand tour market, but showing the development, distribution integration, why is this?

According to the data from App Annie, of the top 20 in the U.S. iphone revenue list, 7 games have been released for more than 2 years, respectively, Supercell's tribal conflict and "island Surprise", King's "Candy Legend", Big Fish's namesake game, EA's The Simpsons, GSN's game GSN Casino and DoubleDown's game of the same name. There are also 5 games released more than a year, respectively, Machine Zone's "War games", King's "farm hero Legend" and "Pet Rescue", D3pa (Vindenans Dream Palace Branch) released the "Fan City", the Cie games racing rivals.

According to the above statistics, the top 20 of the U.S. iphone income list 12 games are released more than 1 years old game, accounted for 60%. In these 12 high-income games, there are 4 categories of elimination games, 3 games, 2 strategy games, 2 farms operating games and 1 racing games. And if we look at the publisher side, in these 12 games, King occupies 3 places, Supercell occupies 2 places. The stronger the situation is particularly obvious, it can be said that the entire United States and Europe, the increase in hand travel income mainly by these products digest.

Hand travel long life cycle, the United States and Europe Hand tour company did, Japanese companies have almost done, however, South Korea and China is not so, then, why so many more than a year of hand travel in Europe and the United States to the long list?

After the initial success began to burn money game, strong product control flow

Do not know how many people remember the previous media reported data: King 2014 TV advertising costs 55 million U.S. dollars, in 11 different TV stations have been put on the cumulative 34,000 times; Supercell put the TV advertising fee has more than 29 million U.S. dollars, the cost of advertising in Korea more than 120 million yuan; Big Fish Games spending 19 million of dollars on TV commercials, while traditional hosting games tyrants Sony and Microsoft in 2014, adding less than 11,000 times.

In Europe and the United States and even the Japanese market, hand travel companies most of the practice is to break a certain number of users after the game began to promote a large area, such as GungHo for the "Wisdom Dragon Fan City" requirements are, download a breakthrough 3 million after the launch of TV ads in Europe and America.

Successful developers, such as king and Supercell, have not only replicated many games, but also bought large amounts of advertising, and these huge promotional fees have led to a significant increase in the number of users, according to King's previous 2014q3 earnings show that the company's Mau reached 495 million. The direct effect of user growth is income growth, according to SuperData's data shows that COC this year's revenue will reach 1.8 billion U.S. dollars, then Supercell can invest more money to obtain new users, coupled with the European and American companies for the game creative loyalty, the current European and American hand in the big environment is almost in the direction of ' Strong constant strong ' direction development.

And because of these highly profitable hand-travel products in the market buying volume, resulting in the European and American region's user purchase cost in the past 2 years has been a sharp climb, the poorer the more the product can not afford to buy. Small teams are increasingly less capitalised on their customers, so they have to win a place with creativity and innovation, for example, we can occasionally see a new independent game on the US-Europe pay list and get a relatively good income.

Europe and the United States to visit the big environment: contrary to China, towards the distribution of research and development integration

From the list above, we can see that the vast majority of high income hand travel is the independent developers, and we rarely hear from Europe and the United States and the developers of their own hand to the distributor to do. At present, the United States and Europe Hand Tour market environment is: attaches great importance to play innovation, the majority of the initiative to study spontaneously, after the successful investment in a lot of money for innovation and marketing. Why, then, do they not want to do a good product, like the domestic, to the tyrants company distribution, to achieve development and distribution division of work?

The main reason is that in Europe and the United States to do independent distribution is the trend they think, the game environment in Europe and the United States over the past few decades, has been the development, distribution and separation of the situation, so Apple app Store, Google Google Play, including Facebook, such as the emergence of a global platform, Let the European and American game developers see the opportunity to bypass the issue of independent distributors.

Before this host game era, as a result of a single game sales, many developers because they do not have the ability to do the global local distribution, to jump open the host platform, the monopoly of the market distribution of large distributors, only to do independent games (mainly digital download games), even if the publisher can see the small team, Want to do a host game also need to be affected by IP, content and other requirements of the issuer, not only the creative freedom is limited, the game after the sale of income is also divided, in addition, many research and development teams after the release, the previous game IP has been owned by the publisher, even if the team has previously been famous works, But want to laurels do follow-up game instead become tort.

And since the launch of the App Store and Google Play, the European and American independent developers have finally had the opportunity to achieve creative freedom and the possibility of selling the game globally. App Store, Google play the massive haemorrhage itself is advantageous to the independent developer. Can breathe the air of free creation, enjoy the opportunity to belong to their works, the majority of developers in Europe and America enjoy.

Rich companies in Europe and America are not keen to go public: Nor are they keen to transform as distributors

And a lot of domestic hand tour company Big goal is to list the difference is, because the European and American region game companies are generally low valuations, such as King's P/E ratio is only 9 times times more. Valuation of less than 1 billion dollars, the vast majority of hand tour companies do not want to do large-scale or listed companies, many developers are more willing to do a certain size after the sale of the company, such as 2.5 billion U.S. dollars sold to Microsoft's "My World" developers Mojang.

As the world's richest, most successful hand tour manufacturers, Supercell in the past 4 years only pushed 5 games (2 of them have their own shelves), supercell Rich did not appear after the business diversification situation, although wealthy, but Supercell did not transfer to do distributors, Help other hand Tour small team to release the product intention, even some game technology also to the specialized company outsourcing, and supercell situation in Europe and America successful Hand tour company is not a case.

After the success of domestic companies like business diversification in contrast, most European and American developers are more willing to use earned income for new product ideas and to promote the game. Europe and the United States have financial resources in the majority of companies in the home to engage in their own home product research and development, this choice led to very few successful hand travel agents of small and medium-sized team products extravagantly do issue.

Because of the lack of strength agents, Europe and the United States and the small and medium-sized team only choice innovation breakthrough, self-reliance. According to a previous survey, 94% of the gaming companies in Europe and the United States do not have the money to pay for the promotion of the game, a few opportunities to break the situation, one is Apple, Google's benevolence to recommend a bit, the other is to get the player community and media attention. Japan's market is similar to Europe and the United States, the majority of large companies to do their own research, such as GungHo to do the agent distribution business developers in Japan is not uncommon, and GungHo has never been the agent of the product into a large.

The choice of large companies in Europe and America: Keen IP, or acquisition of successful game IP

Another phenomenon is that some large companies in Europe and the United States are more willing to buy IP, these IP has a natural capacity to absorb, and the user's loyalty is high, and have the opportunity to make a series of masterpiece, indirectly for its province a lot of promotional costs. The majority of European and American distributors do not have the same ability to control absolute market share as domestic channels, the App Store and Google Play are open to all developers, so the way to succeed continuously is to bet on IP.

For example, EA into the list of 2 hand tour Madden NFL and the "Simpsons" are IP licensing products, and Glu Mobile last year, the successful "Deer Hunter" is the company's accumulated IP, this year's successful "Kardashian: Hollywood" is to take the entertainment star IP, And also spent 100 million of dollars to buy the racing rivals developers CIE games, the purpose is to racing rivals this racing category.

And such a European-American hand Tour distribution pattern, in fact, to China, Japan and South Korea hand-Travel distributors to enter the market opportunities. Just, to do a good job in Europe and the United States localized products, for the three regions of Japan and South Korea are still very difficult, only a very small number of original products from East Asia have been successful in North America, and like Dena, Gree directly take the acquisition of European and American developers to do localized products.

Future

It can be said that the United States and Europe, most of the hand Tour team are more inclined to self-study spontaneous, the game into a brand to operate, with the income to invest in innovation and advertising, the brand to do even greater. So, in the foreseeable future, competition in Europe and the US will become more intense, with more games likely to dominate the income list, while smaller teams will start to turn to ad revenue and paid gaming revenues, such as Flappy Casual games or "Monument Valley" innovative, premium-quality paid games.

But in the field of mobile phone games, because of the serious scarcity of large distributors in Europe and the United States, or do not tend to take the products of small and medium-sized companies to do the distribution, resulting in market control more and more to large companies and successful companies. To break this market balance and establish a new business model is the opportunity for China, Japan and Korea to be in the overseas market.