The arrival of holidays will often cause the seasonal growth of users in the game industry, but this year's Spring Festival, due to the need for epidemic prevention and control, people can only stay at home, so gang up with friends has become the first choice to pass the boring time.

During this period, the user data of many games has increased significantly, and the servers of individual products have been crowded by players. Correspondingly, the share prices of game companies have been rising all the way in the secondary market.

However, it should be noted that the epidemic will still be brought under control, and player users will still return to normal work, study and life. in fact, the substantial increase in user data is very difficult to really retain.

Whether the user can be retained in the end, or return to the quality of the game itself.

It can be said that the sudden prevention and control of the epidemic has unexpectedly caused the market of the game sector to float red, so what opportunities are there for the whole game industry to pay attention to in the next 2020?

First, the prevention and control of the epidemic accidentally led to a sharp rise in the game plate.

Under the influence of novel coronavirus, everyone has to stay in the house this winter vacation, and with the postponement of the start of school, people have to think of something to do at home, and games, as the mainstream leisure way for young people, become the best choice to stay at home to pass the time.

According to data released by QuestMobile, during the Spring Festival period, the number of online hours of users across the network rose sharply from January 24 to February 2, with the total daily use time rising rapidly from the initial 5.06 billion hours to 6.11 billion hours. Among them, the number of mobile game users has increased by 30% compared with the usual day, and the per capita one-day use time has increased by 17.8%.

1. Tencent, the number one player in the game industry, the server is crowded.

February 11, from Tencent's national-level mobile game "Arena of Valor", the server was crowded by players, unable to log in, the topic also boarded Weibo Corp's hot search.

According to QuestMobile data, the number of users of "Arena of Valor" and "Game for Peace", owned by Tencent, both increased by more than 30 per cent during the Spring Festival; in terms of user duration, the per capita usage time of "Arena of Valor" increased by nearly 75 per cent year-on-year, and that of "Game for Peace" also reached 24.6 per cent year-on-year.

With the strong support of the data, Tencent's share price fell during the Spring Festival, but it has risen continuously since then, reaching its highest level since 2019.

2. NetEase, Inc, the second in the industry, has the blessing of Youdao, Inc in addition to games and online education.

NetEase, Inc, the number two in the industry, launched a 3D version of her new novel "Fantasy Journey to the West" before the Spring Festival, and the two-dimensional masterpiece "Onmyoji" made a comeback. At one point, she rejected "Game for Peace" and returned to the top three on the ios best-seller list.

In addition, the company's independently listed youdao rose more than 80% in two days by virtue of online education. With multiple positive results, NetEase, Inc's share price also reached a new high since 2019.

3. Number one in the mobile game community, the share price of the company has risen one after another.

Due to the growth of the overall data of the industry during the Spring Festival, the share price of Xinxin Company, which owns the taptap mobile game community, rose sharply again after Chairman Huang Yimeng increased its holdings by nearly HK $38.5839 million on January 16. at present, the company's market capitalization has exceeded 10 billion, and the share price is close to HK $30.

It can be seen that after the superimposed effects of the Spring Festival and epidemic prevention and control, the share prices of game companies in the market have risen sharply, so what opportunities are there for the whole industry to pay attention to in the next 2020?

II. New opportunities for 2020

1. The new mainframe is expected to lead to the replacement of manufacturers' works and bring new growth.

Both Sony Group Corp and Microsoft Corp will announce their new game consoles in 2020, and after Tencent successfully cooperated with Nintendo at the end of 19 years, domestic manufacturers also focused on the console game market, which has huge room for growth.

The unit price of the console game is high, the user stickiness is strong, the global market reaches 47.9 billion US dollars, accounting for 32% of the total game market, the market is very attractive.

The early domestic work "Rain Blood" and "Ash" in the past two years have also caused a sensation in the market, proving that domestic manufacturers are capable of developing excellent works with their own characteristics.

In addition, the release of the national version of the switch mobile host, for domestic game developers, can greatly facilitate the transplantation of mobile games works that manufacturers are good at, and has a good role in mine detection and trampling on the big market of mainframe games.

2. 5G backend applications, cloud games continue to be popular

At present, there are a number of cloud game platforms online, from traditional game giants to equipment leaders, even Internet bosses, all want to take this opportunity to take the lead in the future game industry.

But at present, from the perspective of the display effect of cloud games, the physical distance has become a gap that is difficult to break through. Although it has entered the 5G era, even Alphabet Inc-CL C's stadia platform still has serious delay problems and game picture quality decline. Therefore, the development of cloud games still needs more exploration.

However, it is undeniable that the birth of cloud games does lower the threshold for players to play games, and greatly reduces the conversion costs of players. One game is not fun, and you do not need to consider the adaptability of the hardware, you can change to another immediately.

Therefore, the R & D ability and innovation ability of game developers will become the key to the next competition.

3. VR/AR has been silent for many years and may be coming out of the cocoon.

When AR/AR technology was first introduced, it became popular all over the world, but it fell silent because of the technical damage.

VR's vertigo has been criticized by users for its refresh rate and picture delay, but with the advent of 5G and low latency is expected to solve the problem of vertigo, Zuckerberg has said that VR may become a 5G killer app.

And with the progress of hardware devices including GPU, sensors, display screens, cameras and so on, AR/VR technology can bring users a better experience; the wide application of smart phones is expected to become a terminal device to experience AR/VR, and the promotion cost of technology application will be significantly reduced.

As the main application scenario of AR/VR, the number of related applications and downloads of games have far exceeded those of other fields. Since its launch, the most famous AR game, Bao Ke Meng, has earned $1.2 billion on Android and $748 million on Apple Inc's ios platform.

Benefiting from the improvement of technology and hardware, games plus AR/VR and even MR, with the blessing of 5G technology, may break out of the cocoon and open up a new incremental market.

Conclusion: whether the flow of unexpected achievements of the epidemic is retained remains to be verified, and new opportunities in the industry are expected to bring new growth.

It can be said that the epidemic prevention and control, so that the game has become the main way for most people to pass the time at home, but from the current game product structure, there are still most of the old faces, and relatively few of the new games on the market.

Therefore, the increased flow during the Spring Festival, as the epidemic is gradually brought under control, people return to normal work, study and life, can these flows continue to be retained?

Moreover, the user size and user data achieved under special circumstances will also become the "five elements Mountain" operated by the company in 2020, and the high benchmark data may suppress the annual data in the coming year.

Of course, we can also see that with the gradual maturity of cloud games and VR technology this year, new consoles are about to appear on the market, and the new works of major game manufacturers are eager to try.

The game market as a whole is still full of vitality, and those manufacturers with excellent R & D and innovation capabilities are expected to become leaders in the industry.