Recently, Sensor Tower, a mobile application data analysis platform, released the "May 2024 China Mobile Games' overseas market revenue and download ranking", and the boutique game Alice's Dream: Merge Games (formerly known as Mergeland-Alice's Adventure) under Newborntown Technology Group was ranked in both the "Top 30 China Mobile Games Overseas Income" and "Top China Mobile Games Overseas Income Growth Ranking" for May 2024.
Alice's Dream is a high-quality synthesis-type mobile game that was officially launched in June 2022. It is based on the classic IP "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" as the game story background, incorporating classic characters such as Alice, the rabbit, the cat, and the queen. At the beginning of the game's launch, it combined various elements such as building, operation, dress up, and socializing. In 2023, the "Ring Puzzle" sub-play was made one of the main progress of the game. Only two months after its launch, the game was recommended by Google Play as a new game globally.
After continuous polishing and optimization following its launch, Alice's Dream achieved a breakthrough in growth in 2023 and has entered the TOP 10 best-selling puzzle games on Google Play in more than 140 countries and regions. According to Newborntown Technology's annual report, the game's average monthly revenue had exceeded $8 million in the fourth quarter of 2023.
As shown in the Sensor Tower game information data, while the overall growth of global mobile games has slowed down, the hybrid casual games maintained a strong growth momentum, with a year-on-year increase in revenue of 105% in May 2024, reaching a historical high and becoming a hot market for Chinese mobile games going global. It is understood that hybrid casual games not only retain the easy-to-use characteristics of ultra-casual games, but also improve players' online duration and retention rate by adding richer content and game mechanisms, thereby successfully tapping into the potential of casual players.
Precisely sensing this trend, Newborntown Technology began to bet on hybrid casual mobile games as early as 2019 and, based on a deep understanding of the overseas market, locked in the key markets of Europe and the United States - Europe and the United States have mature game markets and are also the biggest markets for hybrid casual mobile games. From January to November 2023, the revenue from hybrid casual mobile games in the United States exceeded $800 million, accounting for 42% of total revenue; during the same period, the European market revenue was nearly $370 million, accounting for 20%.
Previously, according to game media reports, Newborntown Technology's game R&D team itself has many years of experience in producing synthesis-type games and has gone through the complete development process of multiple merging products. Its team has deep accumulation in art design, theme selection, and program framework and is familiar with the characteristics and user preferences of the European and American markets.
In order to improve R&D efficiency, Newborntown Technology also independently developed the intelligent game framework Solar Creator based on the Unity engine and the Tencent xLua plug-in, which is highly adapted to the company's game R&D needs. Combined with the company's technology advantages in the field of AI, it can greatly avoid the problem of repeatedly making wheels in the game R&D process.
At the performance briefing in March this year, Newborntown Technology CEO Li Ping stated that in terms of boutique games, the company will further enhance the commercialization capabilities of Alice's Dream, while steadily incubating new products and creating more 'evergreen' games.