The Three Fortunes have come to an end, and the Beginning of Autumn has arrived anew. What new things are worth paying attention to in the gaming industry this week?
In terms of industry, the Cologne Game Show will officially open on August 21st, with multiple domestic and foreign manufacturers announcing their participation. The number of reserved booths has increased by 66% compared to last year. At the same time, this game exhibition will showcase a large number of new games, including highly anticipated large-scale games such as Civilization 7, Monster Hunter: Wilderness, Dune: Awakening, and Seven Days World.
In terms of domestic game companies, the final promotional video for "Black Myth: Wukong" has been released. As the most popular large-scale single player game in China, "Black Myth: Wukong" has over 580000 followers on the Steam platform. This week, it ranked first on the Steam national bestseller list and third on the global bestseller list. The final promotional video broke 7.5 million views on Bilibili within 3 days.
In terms of overseas companies, Sony and SE have both released their latest quarterly financial reports. From a data perspective, both companies have seen an increase in profits, thanks to their MMO products, with the latter's profit skyrocketing by 250.1% year-on-year.
In terms of policies, the State Council recently issued the "Opinions on Promoting the High Quality Development of Service Consumption", which mentioned the need to improve the quality of online games and accelerate the development of various new business models. Driven by this news, the stock prices of several listed companies in the gaming sector have risen this week.
The Cologne Game Show is about to open, and game manufacturers such as Tencent, NetEase, and Xbox have announced their participation
This year's Cologne Game Show is coming soon and is scheduled to be officially held on August 21, 2024. The Cologne Game Show has gathered a large number of domestic and foreign game manufacturers. In terms of overseas manufacturers, Capcom, SE, Xbox and other official manufacturers have announced their participation in the exhibition; In terms of domestic manufacturers, Tencent and NetEase have also announced their participation in the exhibition. In terms of gaming, multiple manufacturers have announced the release of new game news and new game trials, including games such as Monster Hunter: Wilderness, Dune: Awakening, Civilization 7, etc.
It is worth noting that Geoff Keighley, the host of the Cologne Game Show, previously stated that the number of reserved booths at the 2024 Cologne Game Show has increased by 66% compared to last year.
State Council document mentions online games, causing stock prices of multiple gaming companies to rise
On August 3rd, the State Council issued the "Opinions of the State Council on Promoting High Quality Development of Service Consumption" (hereinafter referred to as the "Opinions"). The Opinion mentions in the section of "Stimulating Improving Consumption Vitality - Cultural and Entertainment Consumption" that "improving the quality of online literature, online performances, online games, radio and television, and online audiovisual content" should be promoted.
Nancai Commentary: The latest "Opinions" released by the State Council can be seen as a further "breakthrough" for the gaming industry and regulatory authorities. Especially the clear proposal to improve the quality of online games provides a certain positive incentive for stimulating the market vitality of the gaming industry. This week, the capital market reacted quickly, with the stock prices of multiple gaming companies rising, reflecting the market's positive response to favorable policies. However, the healthy development of the industry still requires joint efforts from all parties involved to ensure that the gaming industry achieves a win-win situation in terms of standardization and innovation.
Final trailer for 'Black Myth: Wukong' released
On August 8th, Game Science released the final trailer for "Black Myth: Wukong" on multiple social media platforms such as Bilibili and Weibo, which is nearly 5 minutes long.
This trailer not only showcases more scenes, NPCs, and cutscenes, but also extensively presents details of the "transformation system"; At the end of the trailer, Game Science also announced that "Black Myth: Wukong" will be officially unlocked and played on four platforms including PS5, STEAM, EPIC GAMES STORE, and WEGAME at 10am on August 20, 2024.
Nancai Review: Currently, the combat system of "Black Myth: Wukong" has a high level of completion, and there are three main types of combat modes displayed: one is the switching of stick attacks, using three different stick postures to deal with enemies; One type is magic, such as body fixation; Another major category is transformation techniques, which can transform a large number of forms and have different combat styles for each form. In addition, this trailer, along with various previous trial and live videos, has already showcased a considerable number of bosses. As of now, the content volume of "Black Myth: Wukong" is not small, and the concern may be the optimization issues of various platforms.
Another Bilibili second game "Light Gap Jieyu" announced its discontinuation
On August 5, the anime strategy card attack and defense game "Light Gap Jieyu", developed by Congyun (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. and represented by Bilibili game, announced that it would be officially suspended on October 18, 2024. The game officially went public on September 20, 2023, and as of today, it has been less than a year since its launch. Guangjian Jieyu "is the fourth game on Bilibili to announce its discontinuation this year. Prior to this, Bilibili's agent games" Slud "," Heavy Duty Warrior ", and" Resident Evil Chronicles "have also announced their discontinuation.
Nancai Comments: Although Station B is still the largest anime "gathering place" in China, and the platform has been continuously exploring in the anime game field, in recent years, the overall revenue of anime games represented by Station B is not optimistic: Up to now, Destiny - Crown Designation still ranks first in the revenue of Station B games, but its life cycle has been 8 years. A large number of Bilibili proxy games have announced their closure in the past two years, causing many players to have doubts about Bilibili's game proxy business. However, compared with the anime game, the SLG game Three Kingdoms: Plan for the World released by Station B has achieved remarkable performance since it was launched in June this year, which may cause Station B to change the strategy of game agency business.
Lilith 'Sword and Expedition: Departure' officially goes public beta
On August 8th, "Sword and Expedition: Departure" developed by Lilith Games officially went into public beta testing. It is reported that this product is a new series of IP games for Sword and Expedition, and the game still uses Lilith's expertise in card placement gameplay. According to Qimai data, as of 19:00 on August 10th, "Sword and Expedition: Departure" ranked 6th on the iOS game bestseller list and 9th on the overall bestseller list. After Bilibili's "Three Kingdoms: Planning the World" and before the paper "Love and Deep Space".
Monster Hunter: Wilderness will offer its first trial at the 2024 Cologne Game Show
On August 8th, Capcom's game "Monster Hunter: Wilderness" will offer its first trial at the 2024 Cologne Game Show. Capcom will set up over 60 trial sites at the game site, marking the first opportunity for the game to be publicly available for offline testing.
In addition, the producer of the Monster Hunter series, Ryozo Tsujimoto, director Yutaka Tokida, and executive director and artistic director Yoritomo Fujioka will also attend the game exhibition and share their insights on the game. Monster Hunter: Wilderness is currently scheduled to be released in 2025.
Sony announces financial report for April to June 2024, with profits soaring by 33%
On August 7th, Sony released its financial report for the first quarter of the 2024-2025 fiscal year (April June), with the gaming and network services business unit achieving a revenue of 864.9 billion yen, a year-on-year increase of 12%. The operating profit reached 65.2 billion yen, a year-on-year increase of 33%. In terms of sales, Sony PS5 consoles sold 2.4 million units this quarter, with a cumulative sales volume of 61.7 million units. Meanwhile, Sony sold a total of 53.6 million games on the PS4 and PS5 platforms, of which 6 million were first party game works developed by Sony itself.
SE's latest quarterly profit is 10.8 billion yen, with over 68% of the profit coming from MMO
On August 6th, Square Enix (SE) released its first quarter (April June) financial report for the fiscal year 2024 to 2025. Data shows that the revenue for this quarter was 69.915 billion yen (approximately 3.418 billion yuan), a decrease of 18.4% compared to the same period last year. The operating profit was 10.844 billion yen (approximately 530 million yuan), an increase of 250.1% during the same period. Among them, the profit of MMO products during the reporting period reached 6.6 billion yen (about 323 million yuan), accounting for over 68%, while mobile games accounted for 31.1% of the total profit, and PC and console games only contributed 0.5% of the total profit.
It is worth mentioning that SE's two new games, Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth and Final Fantasy 16, were not released in Q1.