Redfinger | Fierce Competition Emerging with More Players Showing Willingness in Mobile Gaming Sector

Against the backdrop of the Chinese game developers going abroad, they are exporting high-quality and high-profit mobile games from R&D to distribution, demonstrating strong dominance over the global mobile gaming market. As such, the great success of Chinese developers also allows more and more European and American major manufacturers to show interest in the mobile gaming sector.

Despite the fact that the competitive landscape in the mobile gaming sector still lags behind, covering from Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo to EA, Ubisoft, and Activision Blizzard, they are the potential to become the main players of domestic game manufacturers in the global mobile gaming sector based on the continued investment in the sector along with the utilization of IP advantage. 

Leading Players Turn to Cross-platform Competition

In fact, due to the lack of European and American developers, the competition especially in the top products mainly lies in China, Japan, and Korea. And with its numbers and history, Chinese manufacturers gain an edge over others, especially in the supply capacity of new mobile products, which is basically maintained at 2~3 times of the sum of Japanese and Korean manufacturers.

Some of them choose to other categories to avoid competition with the leading manufacturers, including card placement games, fusion games, and other casual mobile games. And top-notch publishers like Tencent and NetEase choose to publish more games favored by experienced 3A manufacturers. A series of games, such as COD Mobile, APEX Mobile, and Diablo: Immortal, is launched to gain profits across the world.

Meanwhile, the cross-platform products represented by Genshin Impact are helping Chinese manufacturers to compete with PC and console platforms. Based on the technical accumulation and lucrative income brought by the development, more and more domestic publishers are beginning to consider cross-platform tricks as a necessary option to improve the quality and experience. In the short term, it can help them quickly embrace the PC and console markets so as to obtain more users. And in the long term, it also paves the way for incubating more domestic 3A masterpieces.

It is worth mentioning that Sony, which had invested in miHoYo at the initial stage, makes a lot of money from the success of Genshin Impact. When Chinese firms are attempting to achieve greater success in cross-platform, Sony believes that the change in attitudes towards mobile games is also significant for its development in the future.

Fierce Competition Among Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo

In August this year, Sony announced that it has formed a PS Studio mobile department in order to operate separately from the business. This move is also seen as a clear signal for Sony to officially participate in the mobile gaming market. Different from Microsoft, Sony did not take the radical strategy to expand but chose to recruit more talent.

According to a report by mobilegamer, Sony has formed an experienced mobile game team over the past 18 months. These senior employees are from Apple, Kabam, Meta, Tencent, Samsung, Zynga, etc. It should be noted that in May this year, Jim Ryan – the head of PS - stated that PS has a large number of unique first-party IPs, which can be ported to the smartphone platform, and Sony is exploring the mobile gaming markets in this regard.

Meanwhile, Sony also announced the acquisition of Savage Game Studios at the end of August this year, which is the first mobile game studio acquired. In contrast, Microsoft's enthusiasm for mobile games is certainly more obvious. Microsoft has been claiming that one of its main objectives in acquiring Activision Blizzard is to own the development team of Candy Crush Saga developer – King. Microsoft thinks of Tencent as a more competitive player in the mobile gaming sector.

It's coincident that Nintendo also sees mobile games as the best promotional channel for gaining more gamers. On November 30, the ARPG Dragalia Lost developed by Nintendo and Cygames officially comes to an end about its operation. As such, there are just five mobile games belonging to Nintendo left in operation. Although Fire Emblem Heroes exceeded the $1 billion mark in cumulative revenue in June, Nintendo's mobile game development still does not appear to be successful compared with its Switch line.

Although Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo's development philosophies have remained divided, they invest in the mobile gaming industry with continuous growth. It indicates that they are bound to allow the sector to become fiercer than ever before to gain more users for their own platform.

Opportunities and Challenges Coexist

In addition to the manufacturers mentioned above, the major European and American 3A firms have also come to explore the mobile gaming market. For example, Call of Duty: Warzone jointly developed by Beenox, Activision Shanghai, and Digital Legends has now more than 25 million pre-registers worldwide.

At the same time, EA also launched APEX Mobile in the first half of this year, which is also a star product with 10 million pre-registers. It is expected to roll out the mobile version of Battlefield within this year.

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six developed by Ubisoft has conducted a B test as well this year, which is anticipated to launch in the short run. It should be noted that this game is developed by its 11 studios in cooperation with Tencent, Ubisoft stated.

In fact, in addition to the card category, almost all categories of mobile games can find counterparts in the console platform, especially FPS and MOBA. On the other hand, despite the deep analysis and accumulated development path, these players may be necessarily familiar with the rules of the mobile gaming sector. For example, as to marketing, compared with limited investment in platforms, how to deliver tangible results in mobile games needs them to think over.

Therefore, with more and more players showing willingness to invest in the mobile gaming industry, it can drive mobile game developers to pay more attention to quality than ever before. Only by improving the R&D ability and learning from past experience can they grasp the trend as well as stay firm to the leading edge in the industry.