Korean media: "Genshin Impact" has completely changed the survival model of mobile games!
On February 6, the Korean media "Global Economy" published an article stating that recently, former Sony president Kenji Sato attended an independent game exhibition held in China. At the meeting, he said, "It is difficult for the Japanese game industry to reach the production scale and update speed of games like Genshin Impact or Honkai: Star Rail." This indicates that there is a significant gap between the Japanese mobile game industry and the Chinese market.
Sato's remarks indicate that the Chinese game industry, especially the production of mobile games and cross-platform games, has reached world-class standards. It also implies that the Japanese mobile game industry has long developed slowly or even stagnated. Even today, the Japanese mobile game market is still dominated by IP games and subculture games.
Under this context, another senior Japanese game industry figure, Ukyo, recently published a long article analyzing the current difficulties in the Japanese mobile game industry. Since entering the industry in 2003, Ukyo has experienced the PC online game era, the feature phone mobile game era, and the smartphone mobile game era. His work experience in mobile game planning, marketing, and distribution has given him a deep understanding of the industry.
Like Sato, Ukyo also noticed the impact of Genshin Impact on the Japanese game industry and said it "shocked the Japanese game industry."
The huge success of Genshin Impact has inspired many game companies, but its high development and marketing costs are another story for Japanese game companies. Therefore, after Genshin Impact has had such a huge and widespread impact globally, Japanese mobile game companies have faced two key choices after 2020: "Can we remain unbeatable without increasing investment?" "Is maintaining the status quo really possible? Do we need more innovation?"
On the other hand, the scale and high production quality of Genshin Impact have also influenced user evaluation standards, directly putting great pressure on the survival of small and medium-sized game teams. According to Ukyo, before Genshin Impact became popular in 2020, games with a monthly revenue of about 100 million yen could still survive in the market. However, after the emergence of Genshin Impact, the average income in the game market has significantly increased, as have the average investment of developers and users' demand for games. This led many originally well-performing games to gradually lose their market and eventually shut down early.
The article also points out that user sunk costs are a major obstacle for new games entering the market. Specifically, most of the popular mobile games currently on the market have been operating for many years, and the longer they operate, the higher the sunk costs existing users have invested in them. This makes it harder for new games to attract existing users.
Original article: toutiao.com/article/1856341431571587/
Statement: The article represents the personal views of the author.