Development is a spiraling ascent, and the resurgence of PCs as a core topic in the gaming industry this year has validated this statement.
When discussing the surge in Steam users in March, we mentioned that the trend of cross-platform products is becoming increasingly evident. The industry needs to anticipate more detailed data segmentation, moving away from the traditional clear-cut divisions based on devices like PC games and mobile games, to enhance the analysis and judgment of the entire market environment.
Data from Gamma Data's "Client Game Marketing Development Report" in May shows that in 2023, the PC revenue of multi-platform products reached 3.385 billion yuan, a tenfold increase over five years. In 2023, 84 PC cross-platform game versions were approved, a year-on-year increase of 282%.
In August, "Black Myth: Wukong" completely ignited the PC fire. The 2024 PC Q3 report from Master Lu directly placed "Black Myth drives a surge in PC installations" at the beginning. Subsequently, the dual-end efforts of "Delta Operation" at the end of September continued to expand everyone's imagination for cross-platform gaming.
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PCs and mini-games are also the largest incremental space in the stock market competition this year. However, we should not focus solely on the domestic market. Looking globally, the second half of the game's overseas expansion requires PC and mobile games to work in tandem.
PC user growth is a global phenomenon.
Newzoo's August forecast report predicts that the global gaming market size is expected to reach $187.7 billion in 2024, a year-on-year increase of 2.1%, slightly lower than the expected $189.3 billion at the beginning of the year.
The PC market is expected to become the "main growth driver" this year, with a size of $43.2 billion, a 4% increase from 2023, accounting for 23% of the gaming market size. Mobile games are expected to generate $92.6 billion in revenue, a 3% increase from the same period last year. Console game revenue will decrease by 1% year-on-year to $51.9 billion, accounting for 28% of the gaming market size.
The number of global gamers in 2024 is expected to increase to 3.42 billion, a year-on-year increase of 4.5%. The number of PC gamers will continue to grow by 3.9%, reaching over 900 million; the growth rate of console game players will slow down to 2.9%; the number of mobile game players will increase by 3.5%, reaching 2.85 billion.
Coincidentally, the surge in Steam users over the past year has also attracted widespread attention. According to the VGI report, Steam's complete game sales revenue in August was $1.44 billion (10.2 billion yuan), a year-on-year increase of 62%. The number of new games released on Steam in August was 1,697, a year-on-year increase of 42%. The peak concurrent online number of Steam was 37.3 million, a year-on-year increase of 25%.By early October, SteamDB data showed that the number of online users on the Steam platform had exceeded 38 million, compared to 30 million in the same period last year.
In terms of hardware comparison data, Canalys's latest report for Q3 2024 indicated that the global PC market continued its growth trend from the previous year, achieving robust growth for four consecutive quarters. In this quarter, the total shipment of desktops, laptops, and workstations reached 66.4 million units, a 1.3% increase compared to the same period last year.
Jon Peddie Research (JPR) also released a research report, forecasting the growth of the global PC gaming hardware market in 2024, expecting a historic breakthrough, surpassing 30 billion US dollars.
A series of data indicate that the leading increase in the PC gaming market will bring new development opportunities, which is also a very good direction for Chinese games to go global and break through the stage bottleneck, not just relying on mobile games.
The similarities and differences in the reasons for the increase
The development path of the domestic game market is different from that of overseas. As previously mentioned in the Game Value Theory, from the perspective of user growth, after more than a decade of mobile game development, under the influence of time, the upgrade of game aesthetics and the transformation from pan-users to core users is also a major trend, with an upgrade demand to higher hardware and experience platforms.
At the same time, with the development needs of mobile games becoming more intense and experience-oriented, especially for some products that emphasize action, large world exploration, and background hanging, manufacturers have consciously promoted users to use mobile game simulators to play games on PC devices.
In addition, in terms of cost, the high cost of mobile game production no longer has the low threshold and low-cost advantages of the past, and investing only in mobile games and cross-platform is no longer a choice between two.
The objective laws of industry development and user evolution in the domestic market, manufacturers' actual actions, provide paths to promote and cultivate some mobile game users to transfer to PC devices for gaming habits.
If the domestic market is the transfer from mobile games to PC, then overseas, the transfer from consoles to PC has become an important driving force for growth.Taking Japan, once a PC desert, as an example, a decade ago when discussing the Japanese market, the backwardness of the PC market was a very important label.
According to the "2024 Japan Game White Paper" published by the famous Japanese game magazine FAMI, last year's Japanese PC game software sales soared from 189.2 billion yen in 2022 to 236.4 billion yen, with a growth rate of 24.9%, and the Japanese PC game market has maintained rapid growth for four consecutive years.
According to gamerblurb, in the past few years, the Japanese PC game market has experienced crazy growth, and the scale has basically tripled from 2019 to 2023.
Comparing data from the Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association (CESA), the scale of the Japanese PC market has grown from about 82.2 billion yen ($560 million) in 2019 to 236.4 billion yen ($1.6 billion) in 2023.
Analysis points out that one of the main driving forces of this growth is that PC games are increasingly favored by young players, who are increasingly turning from console games to PC games. Although consoles such as PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch still occupy a large part of the game market, the proportion of PC games in Japan's overall game revenue has increased from 5% in 2019 to 13% in 2023.
Comparing Newzoo's forecast report, it is clear to see that there is a relationship of mutual cancellation between PC and consoles. There is also a case of "Valorant" as a product of Riot Games, a European and American manufacturer, which first achieved a monthly active user base of 35 million on PC before going to consoles, and then promoted mobile games.
However, whether it is domestic or overseas, behind this phenomenon of user transfer to PC, the most fundamental is still the guidance of products.
Users who grow up will independently choose a better platform to play better game products, and ultimately guide the flow to the PC platform.
From a developmental perspective, it is inevitable for domestic manufacturers to focus on PC.
The slowdown of Chinese mobile games going overseas has been going on for quite some time.In 2023, the actual overseas sales revenue of China's independently developed games was $16.366 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 5.65%. This marks the second consecutive year of decline following 2022, with an expanded margin of decrease, indicating significant growth pressure for games going global. The overseas operations of more companies are facing challenges, intensifying the demand for optimization of game companies' overseas business.
In contrast, in July 2024, the actual overseas sales revenue of China's independently developed games was $1.586 billion, a month-on-month decrease of 0.03% and a year-on-year increase of 5.30%. With the addition of Black Monkey in late August, the actual sales revenue reached $1.88 billion, a month-on-month increase of 18.55% and a year-on-year increase of 25.12%.
In addition to the inspiring performance of Black Monkey, among the top 10 games with the largest reservation increase on Steam in August, five games were developed by Chinese manufacturers or their overseas subsidiaries. The first was "Delta Operation," a collaboration between Tencent's TiMi and ChongDream, with the number of players who reserved the game increasing by more than 1.1 million. Additionally, the wish list for "Unlimited Machine," developed by Xishanju, ranked fourth and grew by nearly 900,000 people in August. The wish lists for "Dark Zone Breakthrough" by Tencent's Magic Cube Studio Group and "Marvel Rivalry," developed by NetEase, each grew by nearly 400,000 people.
Citing a report from Interface News, after Tencent released its semi-annual report, three senior executives of Tencent - Ren Yuxin (Chief Operating Officer of Tencent Group), Ma Xiaoyi (Senior Vice President of Tencent Group), and Tang Yibin (Vice President of Tencent Group) - held a face-to-face communication meeting within IEG (Interactive Entertainment Business Group).
"Over the past two years, more and more new projects within IEG have been initiating cross-platform projects, which has also given some employees a new perspective on the value of the PC market."
Ma Xiaoyi responded by saying that the PC has shown a clear trend of revival in recent years, becoming an increasingly important market and the source of incremental growth in the gaming industry.
Leading manufacturers have expressed their judgment on the PC industry and going global through actual actions. In the next phase, the effect of PC and mobile games working together to increase both new and existing users will directly affect the historical process of China's game industry going global.