"Summer" has always been an important time node for the layout of domestic game manufacturers, and this year's market is more lively than before.
First, the distribution of game version numbers was stable, and the number of new games in the market increased significantly, with the number of version numbers reaching 689 in the first half of the year, an increase of more than 25% over the same period last year; Second, after avoiding big hits such as "DNF" in May and "Black Myth: Wukong" in August, manufacturers who can't miss the summer file are crazy about "new" in June and July to grab the market and increase performance.
Recently, Game Gyro has roughly counted 67 new products from 54 game manufacturers on platforms such as App Store, TapTap, and Haoyou Kuaibang, including Tencent's "World Qiyuan", NetEase's "Sixteen Voices of Yanyun", miHoYo's "Jeopardy Zero", Lilith's "Awakening of Ten Thousand Dragons", etc. In order to let everyone understand the fierce battle in this year's "summer file" game market.
Tencent, NetEase, and miHoYo met, and a variety of S-level new products were launched "rush"
Without exception, the battle in the game market this summer is also extremely fierce, and more than 100 products are expected to enter the market. In addition to the more than 30 new products that have been launched in June, nearly 70 will be launched in the next two months. Among them, Tencent, NetEase, and miHoYo all have new games launched "rush".
Tencent is expected to launch 4 games, namely the racing game "Need for Speed: Assemble", the SLG game "World Qiyuan", the synthetic dress-up mobile game "Manor Combination" and the platform fighting game "Dawn of the Stars".
Among them, "Need for Speed: Gathering" and "World Qiyuan" are all products supported by big IP and strong topicality, the former is an open-world racing mobile game, developed by Tencent TiMi and authorized by EA; The latter is an SLG product, developed by Tencent Northern Light Studio and authorized by the "Civilization" IP. At present, "World Qiyuan" is scheduled for July 16, and the score of Haoyou Express is 7.6.
Expected to launch on July 23 this year, Manor Hehe is a casual synthetic mobile game developed by Finland's Metacore Games and represented by Tencent. The overseas version of the game, Merge Mansion, was launched in September 2020 and topped the free charts in many regions of North America upon its launch. According to Metacore's product manager, as of July last year, the revenue of this product has exceeded 211 million US dollars (about 1.531 billion yuan).
Although Tencent has not announced the specific schedule of the action mobile game "Dawn of the Stars", the App Store page shows that the reservation information is July 25. This is an action mobile game developed by Tencent TiMi based on the Honor of Kings IP, and is nicknamed "Honor of Kings Smash Bros. by players". In May of this year, the game announced the launch of the "Chicken" gameplay "Star Soul Battlefield", and the combat format was changed from 2D to 3D, and this change has received quite good feedback from the player base.
It should be noted that NetEase's melee chicken game "Naraka: Bladepoint Mobile Game" has been scheduled for July 25. If Tencent's "Dawn of the Stars" is launched at the same time, the two major chicken-eating games will "collide", and it will be interesting to see who wins and who loses.
The PC version of the game was launched in 2021 and has set a record for the highest sales of a domestic buyout game, accumulating a large number of loyal gamers around the world, which has also laid a high user base for Naraka: Bladepoint Mobile, with more than 30 million pre-orders for the game.
In addition to "Naraka: Bladepoint Mobile Game", NetEase is also expected to launch 3 games in the summer file, "Seven Days World", "Sixteen Voices of Yanyun" and "Broken Land". Among them, "Seven Days World" was launched on July 10.
"Sixteen Voices of Yanyun" was originally scheduled to be launched on July 26, but it has been officially postponed, and said that it will invest more energy in improving the game, and plans to carry out a larger-scale multi-terminal interoperability test. This is NetEase's self-developed martial arts theme + open world product, the gameplay is different from the traditional MMO, and the mode of coexistence of single and multiplayer is designed. At present, the game has more than 1.66 million pre-orders on TapTap, with a rating of 9.
NetEase's other game "Shattered Land" has not officially announced the official launch time, but its main creative team revealed at the game tasting meeting that the game is expected to be officially launched for public beta in the third quarter of this year. This is a highly playable Chinese-style wasteland TPS, which integrates "Chinese + Doomsday Wasteland + Punk" in style, and has this rich dungeon level content and exploration gameplay.
Unlike Tencent and NetEase's high-frequency new game releases, miHoYo basically releases one game every three years and eats one game for three years. Following "Honkai: Star Railway", miHoYo launched a new urban action-adventure game "Jeopardy Zero" on July 4.
When the game was launched, Gyro Jun posted that this game combines the art style of comics and retro temperament, the level advancement mode with the grid and the character design that miHoYo has always been good at, and in many aspects it has come up with very good quality. However, many players have reported that the game's action combat is not fun enough and the level experience is slightly hypnotic.
In the past half month, players' reviews of "Jeopardy Zero" have been mixed, but there is no doubt that miHoYo's work is still a hit. Diandian data shows that the estimated revenue of "Jeopardy Zero" in the overseas market (after deducting the platform share) exceeded 60 million yuan in the three days after its launch. DataEye Research Institute estimates that the estimated turnover of "Jeopardy Zero" in the first three months will reach 1 billion US dollars (about 7.2 billion yuan).
Station B, Xindong, Lilith, Mu Tong, etc., multi-manufacturer "explosive" summer chaos
In addition to the three giants of Tencent, NetEase, and miHoYo, there are also 51 game manufacturers who have joined the summer brawl. Sanqi Mutual Entertainment, Station B, Xindong, Lilith, Mutong, etc. have all come up with blockbuster products.
Sanqi Mutual Entertainment is expected to launch two new products "Lost Star Ring" and "Time Grocery Store" in the summer file. "Lost Star Ring" is the national server version of "Kingdom Guard" released by Tap4Fun overseas. The game has been launched overseas and has accumulated more than 1.5 billion yuan of turnover, and may have good results after being introduced into the domestic market.
"Time Grocery Store" is a simulation management game, players will travel back to the 90s, and then start from a part-time job at a breakfast stall to accumulate and run a store step by step, and open a variety of new businesses, you can also experience the characteristics and customs of the 90s.
However, it should be noted that the competition in the summer simulation business track is fierce, and during this period, there are new products such as "Heartbeat Town", "Portia Time" of Pasya Technology, and "Beverage Town" of Nino Network.
The R&D cycle of XD's "Heartbeat Town" is as long as 8 years, meticulously crafted, and has great DAU potential, and the company has high expectations for it. Pasya Technology's "Portia Time" is a transplant of Steam's super high praise rate.
Station B's "Blazing Sky" is expected to be launched on July 17, this game is a two-dimensional game developed by Wright Flyer Studios and created by Jun Asaeda, the overseas version will be launched overseas in 2022, and has basically remained in the TOP100 of Japan's iOS best-selling list, and the operation is quite stable. This is another time that station B is an agent for overseas popular two-dimensional products, so some people in the industry believe that station B will return to the comfort zone, and this new game may have a big move.
Kaiying Network's self-developed new game "About My Reincarnation into a Slime: New World" is a mobile game licensed by the "About Me Reincarnated as a Slime" animation genuine IP to build a magic country RPG-style strategy development mobile game, in which players can summon partners from all walks of life to fight side by side to explore the new world, and can also grow step by step with natural skills, resist attacks from other races, and build their own kingdom.
Shiyue Network's "Eternal Nightfall: Recovery" is a turn-based idle card RPG mobile game with a dark style and Western fantasy theme. As the "Night Walkers" of the "Light Chaser" organization, players travel through the intricate sect camps to discover the truth called "Eternal Night". The gameplay is a standard placement analogy mode, vertical combat, attribute restraint, fetters bonus, attribute bonus, and the mechanism is relatively complete.
Also an idle card game, Lilith's "Sword and Expedition: Departure" is also set for the summer file, the game producer Jiang Yuan has participated in the production of the American version of "Xiaoice Ice Legend" and "Hero Battle Realm", and later served as the main planner of "Sword and Expedition", and led the team to develop "Sword and Expedition: Departure" in 2020. At the end of March this year, "Sword and Expedition: Departure" was the first to land in overseas markets and performed well.
Lilith's other SLG masterpiece "Ten Thousand Dragons Awakening" is the second new SLG product in cooperation with Legou, and is considered by the outside world to be the successor to "Kingdom Awakening". At present, the game has been launched in Europe and the United States, and the national server version has been given a version number in January, and the current App Store page shows the reservation information on August 20.
It is the same "export-to-domestic" product as Lilith, and Muyu Technology's MOBA product "Winning the Peak" was once popular overseas, and now it has moved to the domestic market. In ByteDance's hundreds of millions of traffic pools, the game's success after its release is not difficult to predict. However, in the MOBA genre, there are already "Glory of Kings", "Pokémon Gathering", "Heianjing" and other jewels in China, and how successful it can be depends on the official investment.
It is worth mentioning that there is also a "hit" "Black Myth: Wukong" in August. Although this game has not yet been launched, judging from the test and the game feedback from all parties, it has locked the "hot model" in advance. The game opened for pre-sale on June 8 this year, and has been at the top of the Steam national best-selling list ever since. According to the estimate of "Guoyou Sales", the global sales of the game exceeded 500,000 copies in three days of pre-sale, and the sales exceeded 100 million yuan.
In addition to the blockbuster works of first-line manufacturers, there are also a number of classic games competing on the same stage this summer. For example, Yujun Oding's "Heroes of the Three Kingdoms: National War Edition", which is an MMORPG game with the theme of the Three Kingdoms as the background. The game continues the classic horizontal scrolling picture, highly restores various historical events, and realizes the national war of 10,000 people on the same screen on the mobile terminal. In the game, players can incarnate heroic historical generals, train various types of troops, arrange troops, and re-experience the lively atmosphere of the Three Kingdoms battlefield.
Ark Interactive's "One Thought Eternal: Youth Chasing Dreams" is an idle card game adapted from Tencent Video's popular animation "One Thought Eternal", which restores the anti-routine of Guoman's blood and funny. In the game, players can operate the classic image of Guoman to participate in various gameplay challenges.
There is also Paper Wedding Dress Studio's "Paper Wedding Dress 7 Qing Lives Up", which is a Chinese-style suspense plot puzzle game, which is the seventh work in the "Paper Wedding Dress" series. In this game, the protagonist will come to the mysterious summer resort - the small town of Ryokenguchi, and experience a bizarre and terrifying story in this town.
epilogue
In the second half of this year, heavyweight products in the domestic game market have been released frequently, and subdivisions have also ushered in multi-point outbreaks. It is foreseeable that the competition in the summer market will enter a "white heat". Judging from the new game schedule we counted, the next product trends are:
First, a number of scheduled "hot models" will meet in a centralized manner, and the competition for user attention will intensify; Second, simulation management, MMO, and two-dimensional games are still the main players in the market, and a variety of new games compete on the same track, and it is difficult to predict who will win or lose; Third, IP products are basically derived from games and animation works, among which Riman and Guoman continue to have a hot momentum; Fourth, casual competitive games such as parkour, auto-chess, racing, party games, and chess and cards are also finding another way to "bloom" freely.
Attached is a statistical chart of new tours:
Note: The launch time of the new game comes from the official, TapTap, Haoyou Kuaibang and other platforms, and some of the information comes from the reservation of the App Store page, which may not be officially finalized, and the specific launch time is subject to the official announcement. Manual statistics of the table are inevitably wrong and omission, for reference only!