On the afternoon of December 15th, Huawei announced a cooperation with NetEase Games on the HarmonyOS ecosystem, which will launch the development of HarmonyOS native applications based on HarmonyOS NEXT.
NetEase is currently one of the seven largest gaming companies in the world. According to the cooperation content announced by both parties, Hongmeng will engage in in-depth cooperation with NetEase in game rendering effects, game energy consumption, and performance. In addition, based on HarmonyOS distributed technology, NetEase's games can utilize the virtualization capabilities of HarmonyOS terminals to provide interactive gameplay such as cross end linkage.
Insiders told reporters that from the perspective of the official announcement, this cooperation involves the entire brand of NetEase Games, which means that all games under NetEase's umbrella may launch a Hongmeng transformation, including "Egg Party", "Against the Cold Water", "Light Encounter", "Fifth Personality", "My World", and so on.
The November 2023 global revenue ranking of Chinese mobile game publishers released by Sensor Tower shows that 37 Chinese manufacturers have made it to the top 100 global mobile game publishers with a total revenue of 1.87 billion US dollars, with NetEase ranking second, only behind Tencent. In November, NetEase accounted for three spots in the top 10 revenue of Chinese App Store mobile games, with "Against the Cold Water" ranking third, its evergreen mobile game "Fantasy Westward Journey" ranking eighth, and "Egg Party" ranking tenth.
In recent years, NetEase and Tencent have competed fiercely in the gaming industry.
According to the financial report, NetEase's net revenue in the third quarter was 27.3 billion yuan, an increase of 11.6% year-on-year. Among them, NetEase's net revenue from games and related value-added services was 21.8 billion yuan, an increase of 16.5% year-on-year. Compared with the leading Tencent, Tencent's gaming business revenue in Q3 was 46 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7%. In terms of volume, although NetEase Games is not yet strong enough to compete with Tencent, its business growth is relatively fast.
"NetEase, as one of the top two gaming companies in China, joining HarmonyOS may be NetEase's move against Tencent, further expanding its offensive," said the person familiar with the matter.
With mainstream game engines and third-party game plugins announcing the completion of HarmonyOS native adaptation, HarmonyOS NEXT has a certain level of game industrialization capability. Since the announcement of the Hongmeng Ecological Game Pioneer Program at the Huawei Developer Conference this year, more than 60 game partners have joined the cooperation with Hongmeng Ecology, and over 50 games have completed the development of Hongmeng's native applications.