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Game-Time report/As more and more major works are scheduled to be released, this year’s domestic two-dimensional market is gradually picking up: First, Perfect World’s “Persona: Phantom of the Night” is scheduled to be released on the 12th of this month, and the public beta library will be released on May 23. Luo game “Ming Tide”, and MiHoYo’s new game “Zero” is about to start a new round of testing and is expected to be launched within the year.
Outside of games, miHoYo has also been experiencing constant gossip recently – last year, it purchased land at a high price of 1.077 billion yuan to build the Shanghai headquarters building, which has officially started construction. At the same time, it is leasing the entire Inventec International Business Plaza building across the road from the new headquarters. According to the bidding document, 99 million will be spent on the overall renovation of the two buildings.
One has a total construction area of 148,000 square meters, and the other is 80,000 square meters. In theory, the number of domestic employees of MiHoYo may indeed sprint towards 10,000 people in the future. Referring to NetEase’s R&D team of about 10,000 people, the top three seats in what the outside world calls “Tengwangmi” are gradually being confirmed.
Another news worthy of attention is: Qichacha shows that,Shanghai MiHoYo Tianming Technology Co., Ltd. has added a new software, the full name of the software is “MiHoYo Game Aggregation Launcher Platform”, referred to as “MiHoYo Launcher”. The development was completed on January 30 this year and just registered on April 3.
MiHoYo’s intention to create “Mijia Battle.net” is obvious. It seems that MiHoYo’s first game platform product is about to surface.
Looking back at China, Tencent has been developing Wegame for many years. NetEase has just recently moved its own cloud game platform “NetEase Cloud Game” to the App Store to complete the full platform layout. The game platform has become the iconic business of major manufacturers. Game-Time will take this opportunity to discuss today: Is MiHoYo capable of being a game platform, and what are the possibilities for this game platform in the future?
In 2024, will miHoYo be qualified as a gaming platform?
At present, companies that are willing to build a gaming platform that players are willing to use, use well, and can generate commercial returns are mostly gaming giants with huge user bases.
Although there are medium-sized game platforms like TapTap and game stores that rely on their own equipment such as mobile phone manufacturers in the domestic market, it is one thing to want to be a game platform. Whether it can be successful depends on the amount of funds, the number of products, and the number of users. Carefully consider the four major dimensions of scale and commercial value.
As for whether MiHoYo is qualified to challenge the gaming platform? First of all, when it comes to the amount of funds, MiHoYo’s annual profit can already be ranked among the top 10 global game companies, so it is naturally not short of money. However, the number of game products is somewhat “thin”.
In the past few years, MiHoYo has basically maintained a rate of launching a new product every 1-2 years. Now it has “Honkai Impact 3”, “Undecided Event Book”, “Genshin Impact”, “Honkai Impact: Star Railroad”, and earlier Five models of “Honkai Academy 2” are in stock. It is also known that new products that have not yet been released include “Zero Zero”; “MiHoYo HYG Game Software”, which has just been registered as a software at the beginning of the year, may be an online simulation business product; and “Project SH”, which has been pushed back.
In other words, in the next three years, Mijia’s operating game products may increase to eight, just barely equal to Battle.net (Blizzard Family has 10 games). In terms of the number of games, building a game platform for these eight games alone, and from the perspective of users selecting games, all of them are MiHoYo games, and they are all two-dimensional. The platform form is equivalent to Blizzard Battle Network Mijia Battle Network.
From the analysis of user scale, how big is the scale of active users of MiHoYo? This is a topic of differing opinions.
Referring to third-party monitoring data, the global daily active users of the mobile version of “Genshin Impact” still exceeded 10 million in February this year. Usually, the ratio of DAU to MAU for a game is about 1:3, 1:4, or 1:5. From this point of view, it is roughly estimated that the global MAU of the “Genshin Impact” mobile game may exceed 40 million.
Let’s look at “Honkai: Star Rail”, which is about to celebrate its anniversary. So far, its revenue is stable, and its DAU may be in the tens of millions. Considering that there is overlapping users between Star Iron and native products (one player plays two games at the same time), the total independent monthly active users of these two mobile games after deduplication may be around 60-70 million. And the MAU of PC and console platforms may be more than 10 million.
Leading the charge with two “female stars”, Game-Time believes that Mijia Ecosystem’s global MAU is expected to be over 70 million, or even higher. From this point of view, it is enough to support a gaming platform.
As for commercial value, refer to Blizzard’s Battle.net business model. If it only serves its own games and is a service-oriented product, if in the early stage it is simply to gather existing MiHoYo users into this “launcher”, the platform itself will not serve the purpose. MiHoYo brings a lot of incremental revenue. But in the future, every time MiHoYo releases a new game, it will give the new game a strong platform operation advantage.
After all, in the era of cross-terminal distribution, creating a multi-terminal launcher is inevitable. Needless to say, it covers the PC side. Considering that the mobile side is installed in the form of an independent APP, users do not need a launcher. However, referring to NetEase’s efforts in creating a cloud game launcher for iOS and incorporating popular games including Mijia products, MiHoYo, which has been deeply involved in cloud games for many years, will definitely follow suit.
Game-Time believes that in theory, “MiHoYo Launcher” will at least be the first to cover the PC side and cloud games of its games. Whether there will be a mobile version in the future, such as a WeChat mini-game that implements platform functions on Android, depends on MiHoYo. How can you judge?
Another major commercial value of the MiHoYo gaming platform is that the Mijia gaming platform is likely to accommodate two major functions: launcher and community. In 2024, when the sense of community presence is increasingly emphasized, the platform only functions to launch the game. This may be a bit too “original” and may even make players feel that it is passive kidnapping. It also fails to reflect MiHoYo’s strong community management and second-generation community. Content creation capabilities.
Miyoushe
Game-Time believes that a game community that allows players to start games and communicate seamlessly is the best form of “MiHoYo Launcher” and will directly affect new product announcements and long-term user retention.
Last year, “Genshin Impact” and “Honkai Impact: Star Rail” were operated at the same time, which has allowed the outside world to see the overlap in users of the two games. What is bought at large external prices is its own users. If there is a game platform, advertising costs will be saved. At least PC and cloud games can be cross-promoted within the platform, and new games will gain a large number of active users as soon as they are launched, bringing huge commercial value.
In the longer term, players who are tired of a single product can switch experiences and socialize freely within the MiHoYo platform, which is conducive to the long-term accumulation of active users. MiHoYo truly “traps” core players and two-dimensional users at home and abroad to form an internal cycle, which is beneficial to the retention of users in the entire Mijia ecosystem.
Want to make Mijia Battle Network? Or Steam, Roblox?
At present, MiHoYo Launcher is more recognized by the outside world as “Mijia Battle.net”, but will it only be a “Battle.net” product? In other words, is it possible for MiHoYo to allow external game products to be launched on the MiHoYo platform and directly compete with Steam?
It stands to reason that the user base that MiHoYo has worked hard to manage is naturally not willing to make wedding clothes for others in vain. However, Game-Time believes that if MiHoYo encounters growth problems and category layout considerations in the future, appropriately introducing third-party game products to give players a sense of freshness is not necessarily a wrong choice.
Judging from the frequency of new game releases, MiHoYo’s own product launch intervals are not as intensive as New Year’s games, and in the short term, they are not even close to Tencent and NetEase’s handful of new games a year. When there is a shortage of new games, or the performance of certain products does not meet expectations, it is inevitable that there will be a hiatus, leading to a loss of players. If it is filled with external games in a timely manner, it can improve the stability of MiHoYo’s game user ecosystem.
As for what types of products are likely to be put on the Mijia platform in the future, Game-Time believes that two-dimensional games from domestic friends may not be the first choice.
Single-player buyout products or creative independent games, or even stand-alone two-dimensional games. These “play and throw away” games may be more suitable for the attributes of the MiHoYo platform. Here we can make a bold imagination. If products like “Black Myth: Wukong” can be introduced, the maintenance and expansion of MiHoYo’s user base is what MiHoYo wants.
Be bold, it’s okay if it is
This is essentially a service provided to core players. These players will originally play this type of game. Non-secondary game products that have no competitive relationship with MiHoYo, differentiated content, or games with a non-service business model are recommended. MiHoYo considers.
But realistically speaking, it is very difficult to become a giant gaming platform like Steam in the long run.
Nowadays, Steam, with a peak of more than 33.67 million online players at the same time, is far from being a challenge to MiHoYo. Taking a step back, MiHoYo seems to have certain conditions to be a three-party game platform that can compete with the Epic Games Store (EGS).
According to information disclosed by EPIC, the peak daily active users of the EGS game store in 2023 will reach 36.1 million, and the MAU will reach 75 million, which is relatively close to MiHoYo’s monthly active users of more than 70 million. Of course, EGS is a pure PC game store, while most of MiHoYo’s users are concentrated in mobile games, but the global user base of the two is almost equal, so it is not impossible for MiHoYo to take the step of a game store in the future.
Epic Games Store
In addition to being a three-party game platform, Game-Time believes that MiHoYo Launcher has another possibility, which is to move towards a UGC game platform or a MOD community platform.
After the new UGC project “as important as Genshin Impact” is released, there is a high probability that there will be an independent editor that can be created by “Genshin Impact” users in the future. As a new direction strongly supported by MiHoYo, it is natural for the “Genshin Impact” mini-game created by the developer to be released on its own platform.
With reference to the more mature foreign UGC ecosystem, it will be natural for the platform to shift to a “revenue sharing with developers” business model in the future. However, considering MiHoYo’s large investment in technology, the share ratio may not be as high as the EGS store (developers share 88%), but closer to Roblox and Fortnite.
Conclusion
Making game platform products is both a blue ocean and a red ocean. On the one hand, except for a few giants at home and abroad, no peers have succeeded, and there are a lot of opportunities that need to be tapped; on the other hand, the supply of new client games is insufficient, making it difficult for latecomers to break out of the circle surrounded by their predecessors and quickly build their own competitive advantages. .
Of course, it is reasonable for miHoYo, which is firmly ranked among the top three in China, to join this big company game at the right time. From the current point of view, the Battle.net version of the MiHoYo launcher should be a sure bet. As for whether there is a chance to become EGS, or even Steam, or move towards Roblox in the future, it depends on the value of the two-dimensional user and whether it can support MiHoYo beyond the second game.
The answer is only left to time and the market to judge.
