Recently, at the Huawei Developer Conference (HDC), Huawei announced the latest progress of the HarmonyOS ecosystem: HarmonyOS NEXT has launched a beta for developers and pioneer users, and will be officially commercialized in the fourth quarter of this year. From the official release of the HarmonyOS in 2019, to the full use of the independent kernel at the beginning of this year, and then to the official sounding of the horn of commercial use in June, these more than 1,700 days are the days of HarmonyOS's "pure-blooded evolution".
For the gaming industry, what is the significance of this "pure-blood evolution"? Nearly 100 game manufacturers gave the best response with actions: Nearly 100 leading game manufacturers such as NetEase Games, Happy Elements, and Sanqi Games participated in the game service forum to celebrate the completion of the development of HarmonyOS original games and witness the rapid progress of the construction of HarmonyOS ecological games.
In the past year, thousands of industries have gathered in the HarmonyOS ecosystem, and more than 5,000 commonly used applications have been developed, of which more than 1,500 have been put on the shelves. At every key juncture of HarmonyOS's development, all aspects of the game industry are not only observers, but also active participants and promoters.
At the new stage of the HarmonyOS ecosystem, Wu Hao, CEO of Huawei Interactive Media Corps and President of Huawei Device Cloud Service Interactive Media BU, announced at the Game Service Forum that based on HarmonyOS NEXT, Huawei Game Center client upgrade, Petal Game Developer Service (hereinafter referred to as "PGS") 2.0 release, and HarmonyOS plan upgrade are important contents to promote the development of native games, sending a clear signal to work with game partners to jointly create high-quality games in the HarmonyOS ecosystem.
From GameLook's point of view, three key words can be extracted from the development process of HarmonyOS in the past ten years: "independent and controllable", "900 million devices" and "technology empowerment", which will represent new opportunities, new directions and new increments for the development of the game industry in the era of game stock. The grand scene of HDC this year also reflects the industry consensus that is rapidly taking shape: as HarmonyOS accelerates into a new stage of commercialization, with the empowerment of technology, participants in all aspects of the game industry are about to witness a new round of "collective take-off".
900 million+ Hongmeng ecological equipment, the next "growth dividend period" is around the corner
In the case that "seeking growth" has become a common proposition faced by domestic developers, various practitioners have launched explorations in many directions in the past. Since the developer preview version of Hongmeng Galaxy Edition was released at the beginning of the year, its ecological potential and considerable imagination space for technological innovation have been recognized by many leading developers as a breakthrough in development.
From the perspective of HarmonyOS itself, since the establishment of the project, HarmonyOS has sharpened its sword for ten years, and has realized all self-research from operating system kernel, file system, programming language, artificial intelligence framework and large model, etc., providing an independent, controllable, safe and reliable technical foundation for the game industry. Ao Ran, executive vice president and secretary general of the China Audio-video and Digital Publishing Association, said that HarmonyOS not only provides a more reliable and open development environment for game developers, but also is born for industrial innovation, which will give the future game industry various possibilities and become an important engine and driving force for industrial development.
In terms of scale, the HarmonyOS ecosystem has become one of the most important independent traffic ecosystems in the market. According to data released by Counterpoint Research, HarmonyOS's share of the Chinese market will reach 17% in the first quarter of 2024, surpassing iOS with 16% and officially becoming the second largest operating system in China. The number of devices in the entire HarmonyOS ecosystem has exceeded 900 million, making it the fastest-growing new generation of intelligent terminal operating system.
Compared with the huge system coverage across multiple scenarios and categories, the supply of HarmonyOS native applications is still in the climbing period. At present, 5,000 key apps from 18 verticals that meet 99.9% of users' usage time have started native app development, but there is still a significant difference from the total number of more than 2 million apps in the mainland mobile device market. This means that in the current state, applications that join the HarmonyOS ecosystem first will get more of the cake from the already huge traffic pool, and seize the traffic opportunity with a higher frequency of user reach opportunities.
In addition to the simple traffic increment, the HarmonyOS ecosystem is expected to bring more structural changes to the game competition paradigm we are familiar with. Although some voices in the outside world believe that HarmonyOS is benchmarked against Android or iOS, the HarmonyOS continues to develop and mature, and has accumulated a large number of digital base capabilities with unique HarmonyOS innovation characteristics, which makes it impossible for us to simply apply past experience to make predictions about HarmonyOS's future development prospects.
For example, as the first pan-terminal operating system in history to open up hardware, open up scenarios, and support diverse interactions, the HarmonyOS ecosystem has the ability to flow freely, which will give rise to a large number of new game scenarios and needs. In addition to the current mainstream mobile games, PCs and tablet devices, smart screens, car machines and other devices are likely to become the main game scenarios in the future. The size of the entire gaming ecosystem is likely to grow further as user touchpoints diversify.
In addition, relying on the Pangu model, the native HarmonyOS has system-level AI capabilities, creating a new Xiaoyi agent, and the characteristics of native intelligence are further strengthened. With the continuous development of artificial intelligence research, under the native HarmonyOS, on the one hand, developers may more fully integrate AI capabilities with the game experience to create a unique native intelligent game experience. In addition, with the support of HarmonyOS NEXT's system-level AI capabilities, game distribution efficiency and refined operation capabilities will be further improved. On the other hand, based on the intent framework, high-quality game content will be intelligently distributed in all scenarios, allowing users to obtain more original high-quality games more efficiently, allowing game distribution to enter the era of "games looking for people", realizing the "two-way running" between users and games, and helping developers maximize the efficiency of content reach.
To put it simply, the new HarmonyOS ecosystem not only brings new traffic scenarios to developers, but also integrates technological innovation of software and hardware synergy with high-quality content, unlocking more possibilities by stimulating user experience and gameplay upgrades. This is very precious in the game circle that is now thirsty for the next outlet.
Commercialization Kicks the Accelerator Button, Technology Empowerment Helps Developers "Seize the Opportunity"
In order to help more developers share the dividends of the HarmonyOS ecosystem, HUAWEI Game Center has released a new version of the HarmonyOS NEXT client, fully supported PGS2.0 adapted to HarmonyOS NEXT, and upgraded HarmonyOS NEXT.
The General Manager of the Game Center of Huawei Device Cloud Service introduced the upgrade of the Huawei Game Center client, which will be based on the features of HarmonyOS NEXT, such as native refinement and native intelligence, as well as the professional content recommendation of the editorial room, to recommend and revise the homepage game recommendation, and to aggregate and display high-quality games in a scenario-based manner, so as to increase the user touch points of native games. The newly launched modules such as "Discovery", "Columns" and "Game Library" will provide traffic support for high-quality native games, help games achieve long-term operation, and continue to build a high-quality content distribution position.
In the past, the threshold for adapting to HarmonyOS made some developers have a wait-and-see attitude towards joining the HarmonyOS ecosystem, but with the cooperation between Huawei and a large number of external developers, the industrialization capacity of HarmonyOS's native games has been further strengthened. PGS 2.0 now fully supports HarmonyOS NEXT, based on native HarmonyOS technology and toolkits, to achieve efficient development. At present, more than 90% of game engines have joined the HarmonyOS ecosystem, and the adaptation of third-party plug-ins is steadily advancing, and subdivisions such as audio and video, physical engines, and operation analysis have been covered. Fast game developers can also use the fast game engine that sinks to the OS level to quickly adapt to "one development and multi-platform operation" with a lower threshold. Huawei has also set up a professional team of more than 200 people to assist developers in the entire process of HarmonyOS native game development to integration.
According to the technical leaders or producers of many projects such as "All-Star Street Ball Party", "Original Journey" and "Awakening of Ten Thousand Dragons", with the help of technical capabilities, tools and development kits covering the whole link, they have hardly encountered serious difficulties in the process of adapting to the original Hongmeng. Huawei has also followed up in an all-round way from the early stage of adaptation, helping partners and developers solve technical problems throughout the process. It is understood that the adaptation and development time of typical products such as "I am a big owner" and "Nine Spirits Divine Domain" is as low as two weeks.
Chai Yi, head of the engine of Perfect World Games' "Zhuxian 2", shared their adaptation experience on the game service forum. As a representative of high-standard games, "Zhuxian 2" is connected to PGS 2.0's performance tuning technologies and tools such as superframe, superresolution, and HiSmartPerf to improve game performance, which not only reduces development costs but also greatly improves development efficiency. "Zhuxian 2" applies a new device-cloud ray tracing technology, using cloud-side computing power to provide high-end lighting computing for the device, so that mobile devices can also support real-time rendering of more than 1 billion rays per second, realizing the PC-level ray tracing image quality to the mobile game experience, so that the immersive experience and quality of the game are further improved.
PGS provides game developer services covering the entire life cycle of the game from project initiation to operation, and PGS 2.0 continues to help the refined operation of the game. Zeng Lingpeng, the publisher and producer of Lingxi Interactive Entertainment's "Romance of the Three Kingdoms: Strategic Edition", shared that under the new HarmonyOS ecosystem, "Romance of the Three Kingdoms: Strategic Edition" is connected to PGS operation services, innovating user interaction methods, and reminding of the two major in-game events of military general recruitment and city attack through system-level entrances such as Xiaoyi Suggestion and negative screen, achieving a player revisit rate of 97%.
In addition, on the basis of the more than RMB 7 billion invested in the Bright Star Program, HUAWEI Game Center has upgraded the "Flying Plan" to provide developers who are the first to adapt to HarmonyOS NEXT with a number of important gifts, such as early traffic support and exclusive feedback on the settlement of the reward plan. The general manager of interactive media business of Huawei's device cloud service said that they hope to repay the enthusiasm of developers to actively adapt to Hongmeng through practical actions.
It is not difficult to see from a series of updates that based on the technological innovation of software and hardware synergy, HarmonyOS NEXT not only meets and stimulates user needs, but also helps the development of high-quality games based on a series of features such as all-scenario, native smoothness, and native intelligence. At the same time, it also uses new user reach methods and innovative game content experience to break the traffic deadlock and bring new incremental opportunities to developers. Through traffic support and incentive programs, the actual benefits of developers in the HarmonyOS ecosystem are enhanced. All kinds of actions have proved that joining the HarmonyOS ecosystem is a must and a "win-win" choice.
epilogue
Since last year, many game manufacturers have been actively seeking changes and constantly exploring new paradigms of growth, some of which are pursuing evergreen games to reconstruct their business models, and some of which are listed companies that have laid out fast games...... And now, the development of the original HarmonyOS and the popularity of game developers have shown us that the next opportunity for development is just around the corner.
From a higher standpoint, our imagination of past game forms is also largely limited by the ecological rules dominated by the operating system. Now, with the breaking of the duopoly pattern of iOS and Android, HarmonyOS has become the "third pillar" of the global terminal ecological pattern; With the concept of openness, cooperation, and win-win, Huawei provides developers with efficient full-link development tools and capabilities, and works with developers to build the HarmonyOS ecosystem, and our structural understanding of the entire game industry may also be subverted in the near future.
Under the rush of thousands of people, the Hongmeng ecology converges into a galaxy. The open HarmonyOS ecosystem may be about to turn a new page in the history of science and technology. At present, we may be standing at the juncture of historical change, and the best "vantage point" to witness this great change is to join in.