As COVID-19 comes to an end, many companies and individuals begin to work normally, and the leisure time for playing games at home is greatly reduced. At present, the macro-economy of all countries and regions is in a downturn. In addition, the adjustment of the privacy policies of Apple Store and Google Play has forced many games to make new adjustments, which has hit the gaming industry a lot. Recently, many gaming industry research institutions have lowered their expectations of the gaming market.
Recently, the well-known industry analysis blog Deconstructor of Fun released a new blog, which analyzed the impact on the major mobile game categories and mobile game market in the post epidemic era, and gave relevant suggestions.
DOF believes that despite the overall impact, the time for mobile game products to enter the top 100 in total revenue is shortening, and some categories are bucking the trend. In addition, the mobile game market will remain attractive, but under the influence of the new privacy rules, all game developers need to actively challenge the launch policy and attach importance to opening up overseas and Android markets to meet new industrial challenges.
The COVID-19 has made the mobile gaming market soar to a new height, but it did not last long before it was hit by changes in the platform’s privacy policy. With the re opening of the world, the participation of game players has declined as a whole. However, mobile games account for 61% of all game revenue. If we consider all in app advertising revenue, this number will be even greater.
Last year, mobile games encountered the first headwind since the formation of mobile game micro trading. The main challenge is of course the change of privacy policy, which makes it more difficult to expand the game scale on iOS. These privacy changes are expected to impact Google Play in some way in the near future. Another challenge that may arise in the far future is cloud gaming. With the continuous improvement of device specifications and network bandwidth, we are beginning to see some mobile game types compete directly with PC and host platforms that provide premium services through subscription services. This may be just a matter of time.
The mobile game market is mature, but it is also developing. In the past year or so, we saw Google Play become the preferred platform for testing and launching new games, because they did not implement strict privacy policy changes like Apple’s App Store.
The change of privacy policy has also promoted vertical integration. Mobile game publishers have widely acquired advertising technology, and they have more ownership of data. In general, in a bear market, integration is the symbol of the game industry, because several top mobile publishers have been acquired by larger game companies, which in turn will lead to more game IPs entering the mobile game market.
However, although we can see from the big data that the whole market is not very prosperous, there are also some games going against the current. Moreover, these games have a very large market share, and the game revenue is also increasing, especially the Android emulator on the cloud. By analyzing the experience of some players in the game industry, we provide three strategies.
Method 1: Give Full Play to Creativity
In the past few years, mobile game publishers have used adaptive algorithms to display advertisements to target user groups. However, since the platform launched a new privacy policy, the focus of publishers has shifted to a deeper understanding of the target audience, continuous market testing and the use of a variety of marketing technologies.
All these measures require publishers to analyze and master the characteristics of players. At the same time, advertising materials need to be tested through the existing marketing platform to increase the number of installations per 1000 people through advertising.
Method 2: Leverage IP
In the past, IP was not as useful as effective marketing. However, the situation has changed: in game development and marketing, IP suitable for game playing can bring great impetus to publishers and promote games to attract more players.
Method 3: Focus not only on the US market and iOS platform
Our mentality is that western countries like the United States have the greatest market potential. However, the cost of attracting users through advertising seems high. In advertising, publishers should seek solutions to ensure that high investment can bring higher returns and try to find a balance. Mobile game publishers should not focus on the U.S. market and iOS platform, but should consider the international market as other countries/regions. In fact, with their excellent localization capabilities, some publishers have successfully entered other markets and achieved great success.