According to PocketGamer, Tencent’s games rank third and netease’s fourth among the top 50 mobile publishers worldwide.

How does netease game become the arch-rival of Tencent game step by step?

Although netease is not the leader in the game industry, its position is not low either. The reason why netease can become the “second leader” in many games is inseparable from netease’s deepening layout in the game industry.

The first stage, the rise of netease games. Since 2001, netease has emerged in the game industry by virtue of independent research and development. It launched A Chinese Odyssey Online ⅱ and became the first successful domestic Online game. After that, Fantasy Westward Journey has become a classic work in the game industry, known as “China’s first online game”. With this series of classic end games, netease jumped into the front line of the game industry and laid its own day.

The second stage, netease games began to form a brand effect. After the popularity of Fantasy Westward Journey, A Chinese Ghost Story and other games, netease expanded the classic end games and launched a mobile game with the same name. With the classic brand effect, the mobile game received a good response after its launch. In addition, netease officially joined forces with Blizzard in 2008 to expand and cultivate game brands by introducing world famous games such as StarCraft ii and World of Warcraft. Netease became the only game agent of Blizzard Entertainment in China.

The third stage is the development of netease mobile games. Netease became blizzard Entertainment’s sole game agent in the Chinese game industry from 2008 to 2014. At the same time, as expected, the game products such as Onmyoji, minecraft and Shore of Land released by netease games in recent years have gradually contributed to the formation of the brand effect of netease. Onmyoji ranked first on the IOS bestseller list shortly after its launch and became the representative of mobile games in 2016. Netease games gained fame and fortune with onmyoji. At the same time, netease also began the same period in the field of mobile layout.

First of all, it continues to invest in flagship products to maintain brand value. Netease develops mobile games based on classic end games such as Fantasy Westward Journey and A Chinese Odyssey westward Journey, which not only takes end players as the foundation, but also saves time and energy in developing mobile games. As a result, netease’s mobile games have achieved great success. During the same period, many derivative mobile games such as Fantasy Westward Journey Hot Blood Edition were produced.

Secondly, when IP was hot in 2015, netease Games was cautious in choosing in-depth cooperation IP projects. Today’s IP and mobile game industry and netease on the treatment of IP development has maintained the rigorous attitude, for example, in cologne series, film and television development after the feasibility of the mobile game, netease began in-depth digging, it is this kind of high quality IP mobile game let revitalized the netease game, strengthen the combat effectiveness against tencent game.

In addition, in order to develop more attractive mobile games, netease launched the “Prometheus Project” in 2016 to vigorously collect story themes and recruit game creators. Netease also combines film and television with mobile games to build an industrial chain that can extend netease games outward. For example, Tang Adapted Fantasy Westward Journey into film and television, Huace Film and Television cooperated with A New Chinese Odyssey ii to develop film and television, and Mango Entertainment invested in the adaptation of Tianxia 3. Netease not only ADAPTS film and television IP into mobile games, but also, most importantly, expands all aspects of the game beyond the game, exerting the influence brought by the game to the utmost, trying to form the full coverage of classic games in this way.

In order to compete with Tencent games, from 2016 to the next five years, netease will invest 1 billion yuan to support netease games to attract more new players to join.

However be like the backside of scenery, netease game hid a lot of helpless

This year, netease game is expected to release 29 games, in addition to the game product itself, netease Game is also trying to create a “pan-entertainment” ecosystem, to the comprehensive layout of the game Tencent ecosystem, to break through the past itself is only a game developer and agent concept.

Tencent, netease’s old rival, has not been idle. Since 2007, Tencent has taken its game industry to a new level with the introduction of Crossfire, Dungeons & Warriors, and League of Legends. In addition, Tencent’s major systems provide a perfect entrance for the development and agency of Tencent’s games. Tencent has become the leader in the game field by relying on the independent development and agency of games and the advance layout of rival games.

In addition to Tencent’s King of Glory, onmyoji from netease was launched in September last year and topped the iOS top grossing charts by October. Its novel gameplay, beautiful graphics, and big-name voice actors have brought onmyoji a lot of users. But now, just over a year later, Onmyoji is showing signs of decline, going from the top of the IOS charts to the bottom of the charts, languishing outside the top 10. And this is not only “Onmyoji” crisis, but also netease game crisis.

In September this year, SensorTower, a Silicon Valley mobile application data intelligence platform, released the top 30 domestic game revenue list, Tencent games became the biggest winner, a total of 12 places, “Tianlong Ba Bu”, “King of Chaos” and other games in the list, among which “Honor of Kings” is an absolute advantage ranked the first. While Netease games only accounted for 4 places, the “Onmyoji”, which used to dominate the list for a long time, only ranked ninth, netease slightly lost Tencent one notch.

The latest financial report of netease also shows that netease Games made a profit of 10.735 billion yuan in the first quarter of this year, and only 9.43 billion yuan in the second quarter of this year, declining. In addition to the first quarter of this year after the breakthrough of ten billion, netease game’s follow-up development is not optimistic, netease game seems to begin to shrink. Now, netease game as one of the two giants of the game industry, seemingly behind the scenery, in fact, also hidden a lot of helpless.

Why is the netease game with good public praise always pressed by Tencent

Now, netease games with excellent production, high playability has won a lot of good impression of players, in the game industry reputation is also good. However, on the whole, netease game in the development of inevitable loopholes still exist.

The development of netease is too dependent on the game field, and its layout in other fields is not perfect enough. The second quarter financial report released by netease this year shows that there is a net income of 13.376 billion yuan, among which the net income in the game is as high as 9.430 billion yuan, accounting for 70% of the net income of NETEASE Q2. Therefore, To some extent, netease’s excessive dependence on games limits the development of netease’s outward derivative and reduces the popularity of the game. Tencent is different. Tencent games are multi-pronged, and each field is complementary to the game, which greatly enhances the external popularity of Tencent games. In addition, netease games still have some problems.

On the one hand, netease game products are beautifully made, but there are loopholes in the profit model. Netease games always uphold the principle of “netease produced, must be high-quality”, the production of its products are made with conscience, but the ultimate goal of game development is to profit, and in the profit model, netease games still need to improve. Take onmyoji’s krypton case for example. In March this year, a onmyoji player spent 9,000 yuan on the game in order to draw a strong god, but got nothing. This is not uncommon. The outside world also spread: play Tencent to money, play Netease to death, visible Netease game payment model has caused public anger. Nowadays, there are not a few RMB players in the game industry, and such a practice of netease Games may cause the loss of players, or even affect the reputation of netease games.

On the other hand, when it comes to netease games, people first think of fantasy Westward Journey, A Chinese Odyssey westward Journey, A Chinese Ghost Story and other classic games. At present, netease games mainly rely on these “older generation” games to support, and lack of new game products to lead the way. And a few of them, such as Onmyoji, have now entered a bottleneck. In the beginning, netease games developed many well-known online games, but up to now, netease games is still relying on the previous terminal games to support its position in the game industry. As the life cycle of classic games continues to shrink, netease urgently needs to come up with new works to compete with Tencent by strength.

As time goes by, the recognition of netease games is getting lower and lower, while the similarity is getting higher and higher, and the popularity of netease games among many players is gradually decreasing. As the no. 2 player in the gaming industry, netease games has been battling Tencent games for years. Up to now, the quality of netease games has not become its magic weapon to win, netease games in order to continue to challenge Tencent games for the initiative of the game industry, it is necessary to innovate on the basis of quality, only in this way is expected to play a beautiful turn over the battle.

Liu Kuang, meditation on the Internet, wechat official account: Liukuang110