Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily, December 15th (Reporter Guo Hui) NetEase Games announced a cooperation with Huawei on the HarmonyOS ecosystem, and will launch the development of HarmonyOS native applications based on HarmonyOS NEXT.
The Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily reporter learned that 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.
It is reported that Huawei's Game Center PGS provides tools and services that support HarmonyOS NEXT adaptation, which can effectively improve the efficiency of game monetization.
Based on the capabilities of HarmonyOS distributed technology and native intelligence, related products can virtualize HarmonyOS super terminals into game controllers, bringing users more diverse interactive gameplay and innovative gaming experiences such as cross end linkage.
It is worth noting that this collaboration is also with Tencent, a leading industry giant in NetEase gaming, becoming the first leading gaming company in the industry to announce the launch of Hongmeng's native application development.
NetEase officially established its online gaming business unit as early as 2001. After more than 20 years of rapid development, it has now become one of the seven major gaming companies in the world with its gaming business.
However, in the domestic market, NetEase Games has long been overshadowed by Tencent. According to industry data company Newzoo, the top ten global game publishers in terms of revenue in the first half of 2023 are Tencent, Sony, Apple, Microsoft, NetEase, Google, Activision Blizzard, EA, Nintendo, and Take Two.
Industry insiders say that as one of the top two gaming companies in China, NetEase Games joining the HarmonyOS ecosystem for native application development may be one of the measures to counter Tencent's gaming business and further expand its gaming business scale advantage.
A reporter from the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily noticed that the main body of the official announcement for this collaboration is the NetEase game brand, not a specific game. This means that all games under NetEase's umbrella may launch HarmonyOS, including "Egg Party", "Against the Cold Water", "Light Encounter", "Fifth Personality", "My World", and so on.
Senior gaming industry analyst Li Wenyuan said in an interview with the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily that game development tools need to run in a system environment. With the improvement of the HarmonyOS environment, support for various software becomes increasingly important, which is also a step that game companies need to take. "As the first software development tool in the gaming industry to adapt to HarmonyOS' native environment, it will have more iconic significance."
Li Wenyuan said that in terms of gaming business alone, NetEase has strong momentum. "The application of AI in the Anti Water Cold mobile game has become popular, and Egg Boy has always been very stable, coupled with the old brand 'Journey to the West' series."
Recently, party games have become popular, with many games such as NetEase Egg Party becoming popular. Regarding this, Li Wenyuan stated that otherwise Tencent would not be in a hurry to launch the Yuanmeng Star as a benchmark for NetEase's Egg Boy Party.
Another industry insider stated that joining HarmonyOS native development applications and improving HarmonyOS NEXT compatible tools and services to enhance HarmonyOS game development efficiency will also help meet the trend of future open world games.
It is understood that 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 Ecological, and over 50 games have completed the development of Hongmeng's native applications.