On December 16, the Game Working Committee (GPC) of the China Music and Digital Association (GPC) and the China Game Industry Research Institute released the “2021 China Game Industry Report”. The report shows that in 2021, the actual sales revenue of the Chinese game market was 296.513 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.4%; the number of game users reached 666 million, a year-on-year increase of 0.22%, and the demographic dividend was becoming saturated; the actual sales revenue of the e-sports market reached 140.181 billion yuan. , The number of users reached 489 million, and in the context of e-sports being selected for the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games and winning the League of Legends finals, next year may usher in a new round of growth. In this context, all parties have more expectations for the development of the game industry in 2022.
According to the report, the actual sales revenue of China’s game market in 2021 will be 296.513 billion yuan, an increase of 17.826 billion yuan compared with last year, a year-on-year increase of 6.4%. Among them, China’s mobile game market revenue was 225.538 billion yuan, reaching nearly 80% of total revenue. Mobile games are still the mainstay of my country’s game market.
It is worth mentioning that although the overall game market revenue still maintains a positive growth trend, due to the gradual weakening of the stimulus effect of the home economy under the new crown epidemic this year, the number of popular games in the year has decreased year-on-year, and the cost of game development and operation and distribution continues to increase For other reasons, the rate of increase has shrunk by nearly 15% compared with last year.
In terms of user scale, the scale of game users in China will maintain a steady growth in 2021, reaching 666 million. But in terms of growth rate, this year’s user scale has increased by only 0.22% year-on-year, which is the lowest growth rate in the past eight years. Gamma data analysis pointed out that this is due to the fact that the demographic dividend of my country’s game market has tended to be saturated, and on the other hand, it is also related to the implementation of new regulations on anti-addiction and the effectiveness of protection of minors.
Game industry observer Liu Yan said: “This means that the domestic game market has become saturated. Under such circumstances, some game companies won’t benefit much from the method of winning by volume. On the contrary, the type of games in the future will change. Subdivision and niche development. For example, the popular two-dimensional game type this year is a typical market segment.” According to the data, the actual sales revenue of the two-dimensional mobile game market in 2021 reached 28.425 billion yuan, an increase of 27.43% year-on-year.
E-sports industry ushered in new growth points
As a new type of competitive sports, e-sports has a market size of over 100 billion, which is a new bright spot in the game market in recent years. The emergence of popular events such as the EDG team’s championship has also attracted more attention to the e-sports industry.
The report shows that the actual revenue of China’s e-sports game market in 2021 has reached 140.181 billion yuan, an increase of 3.624 billion yuan over 2020, a year-on-year increase of 2.65%. In terms of user scale, the scale of Chinese e-sports game users reached 489 million in 2021, an increase of 13 million over 2020, a year-on-year increase of 0.27%.
In terms of growth rate, compared with the same period last year, the growth rate of the e-sports market has slowed down. Gamma data analysis pointed out that due to the inseparable relationship between e-sports and games, the growth rate of the revenue of the e-sports market has declined due to the slowdown in the overall game market growth. In addition, due to the continued impact of the epidemic, offline activities of important e-sports events have decreased, and the online model is difficult to achieve commercial realization, which has also affected the growth rate.
“Although the growth rate of e-sports game users slowed down in 2021, the aftermath of winning the League of Legends finals is still continuing, which has caused a large number of non-e-sports fans to pay attention to the industry, plus the upcoming 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games E-sports has been included as an official event, and it is foreseeable that next year will probably usher in a new round of growth.” Liu Yan believes that compared with other sports, e-sports is more popular among young people and is likely to become a sports event. The new mainstream in China.
Going out, cloud gaming is the development trend
As the domestic market is becoming increasingly saturated and competition is increasing, Liu Yan believes that “going abroad” has been an industry keyword in recent years when it comes to where the game industry is going in 2022.
Data shows that in 2021, the actual sales revenue of China’s self-developed games overseas reached US$18.01 billion, a year-on-year increase of 16.59%. “As the impact of the epidemic on the global housing economy has subsided, this growth rate is sufficient to prove the prospects of the overseas market. From the data of the past three years, the proportion of my country’s game industry in emerging markets other than the United States, Japan and South Korea has shown an increase in revenue. The trend shows that there are still a large number of blue ocean markets overseas that need to be developed urgently.” Liu Yan said.
Another welcome change is that in 2021, China’s client game market revenue will reach 58.8 billion yuan, the first growth trend in the past three years. The report pointed out that this phenomenon is mainly related to the outstanding performance of newly launched client products this year and the gradual rise of a full-platform distribution model centered on mobile games. Liu Yan analyzed this: “Cross-platform games and cloud games are definitely a major trend in future development. Although some companies have experimented with related applications, they are still in the early stages, and further breakthroughs in 5G technology are still pending.”
“For game companies, high-quality games are always the core competitiveness of the company. Therefore, improving independent innovation and R&D capabilities and increasing the development of high-quality masterpieces are eternal topics.” Liu Yan added.
Beijing Commercial Daily reporter Lu Yang Zhou YangyangReturn to Sohu to see more
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