After the Egg Boy Party, NetEase continued to expand its category layout, stepped up its IP linkage, and tried to find the next phenomenal blockbuster.
On the evening of May 20, the annual 520 online conference of Netease games arrived as scheduled. At the meeting, NetEase unveiled more than 12 new games, including Firefly Assault, Broken Land, Seven Day World, covering shooting, the open world, strategic cards, tactical games, multi player competition, and even VR, with a wider layout and a longer front.
Zhang Shule, an analyst of the game industry, pointed out to Time Finance that NetEase has completed the layout of double blockbusters by relying on Egg Boy Party and Cold Against the Water, and has a more stable position in the Chinese game industry. It has the strength to further expand the results and explore the possibility of more blockbusters in the vertical game field.
According to the financial report data of NetEase in 2023, NetEase will record a net income of 103.5 billion yuan in 2023, up 7.3% year on year; The revenue from online games reached 81.6 billion yuan, up 9.4% year on year; The net profit attributable to the parent company under Non GAAP was 32.6 billion yuan, up 43.0% year on year.
The growth was mainly due to the increase in the net income of mobile games such as Egg Boy Party and Cold Against the Water. Relevant data shows that the number of daily live users of Egg Boy Party during the Spring Festival has exceeded 40 million, and the number of registered users has also exceeded 500 million; The mobile game "Cold Against the Current" created a new milestone in the MMO field, attracting more than 100 million active users.
Specifically, among the 12 new tours released by NetEase, there are many key new products that have been expected for a long time, such as "The Sixteen Voices of the Swallow Cloud" and "Forever".
As the first full platform masterpiece of NetEase with 3A specification, "Yanyun Sixteen Voices" integrates elements of chivalry and open world in three aspects of exploration, combat and narrative, and the market places high hopes on it. Even Ding Lei, CEO of NetEase, mentioned in the previous financial report call that the product development cycle takes three years, and the company attaches great importance to it, and will use NetEase technology to meet the needs of different hardware users for game quality and experience.
At the beginning of the press conference, the "Yanyun Sixteen Voices" project released the latest game preview, and announced that it would start the last test before going online on May 31, and planned to launch the official version of the game on July 26.
NetEase also released a live demonstration of the latest development progress of the mobile game "Forever", and said that within a month, it had made a lot of optimization for the problems and suggestions put forward by the first test players. The sales volume of the end game version of the game has exceeded 20 million, and the first domestic buyout game with global sales of more than 10 million. Therefore, the mobile version of the game is also highly anticipated by the market, with more than 25 million online reservations.
Ding Lei once revealed that "Infernal Mobile Forever" is tentatively scheduled to go online in the second quarter of this year, but the news that the game has been finalized was not announced at this conference.
At the same time, NetEase also disclosed a large number of cooperation with world-famous IP, and its overseas layout for many years has finally achieved preliminary results.
For example, in 2022, the agency right of the national service of the overseas card "Dark Horse", "MARVEL SNAP", was finally won by NetEase, and the national service was named "Marvel Ultimate Reversal". This product was developed by the Second Dinner studio founded by the former Blizzard producer. NetEase invested in this studio in 2019; The SLG strategy game "Lord of the Rings: Disputes", licensed by the Lord of the Rings IP, also opened on May 16.
NetEase has also reached a number of cooperation with the Japanese game giant SE (Skwell Enick), not only bringing the authentic mobile game "The Traveler at the Wrong Way: The Overlord of the Mainland", which has been successful in the world, to China; Sakura Studio set up by NetEase in Japan has also jointly developed Vision of Mana based on the well-known game IP "Legend of Holy Sword" with SE. This game will also become the first game to meet players in NetEase's overseas studio layout.
In addition to researching new games, NetEase also disclosed the latest trends of 30 products in operation in this press conference. For example, the 2nd anniversary of Egg Boy Party, which has attracted much attention from the market, was announced to be fixed on June 14, and the magic Abby, a full line player, also made its debut.
At the same time, on May 20, the State Press and Publication Administration released the latest version number of domestic games approved in May, and the approval information of 54 games was changed. Among them, NetEase changed the information of a 2017 version of "Huo Zhan Meng Meng Xiao" to "Egg Boy Slippery". According to the official information, this game was once a leisure three elimination game with 1v1 real-time game play, which was launched in December 2015 and offline in June 2017.
A game that has been off the shelf for 7 years was rediscovered, and the market generally speculated that a "three elimination" game of Egg Boy IP would be added in the future. Similar actions have taken place before. After the explosion of the "Yin Yang Shi" IP, NetEase has stepped up the development of the MOBA game "Final Battle! Ping'an Jing", the CCG card game "Yin Yang Shi: Hundred Hearts" and the placement mobile game "Yin Yang Shi: Monster House", and achieved good results.
From this point of view, NetEase seems to be interested in creating "Egg Boy Universe", and there may be more Egg Boy IP games in the future.
In Zhang Shule's opinion, as the only company in China that has ever made such IP games as Yin and Yang Master into super blockbusters, expanding the IP game matrix can not only guarantee the capital, but also possibly create phenomenal blockbusters again.
In addition, the computer version of Dream Journey to the West announced that it was linked with Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf, while the mobile version launched a new official system; New versions of games such as Dahua Westward Journey, Yin and Yang Master have also been released simultaneously.
The Blizzard game "Family Bucket" and other Blizzard games that were declared "composite" with NetEase officials on the morning of April 10 did not appear in this press conference. Only Diablo: Immortal disclosed the new professional role and the second anniversary celebration, but this mobile game jointly developed and released by both parties has a separate contract, which has not been affected by the cooperative changes of NetEase Blizzard before. However, there is no new news about the return of Blizzard National Service. From this perspective, it may still take some time for Blizzard National Service to return.
At present, NetEase is facing the dilemma of long-term operation of old games. Taking Dream Westward Journey, which has been launched since 2015 and is still a cash cow, as an example, Qimai data shows that the estimated turnover of the game in 2023 is 282 million dollars, down 23% from 2022.
In 2023, when the number of blockbusters is high, the strong growth of Egg Boy Party and Cold Hand Tour against the Current can cover the impact of the decline of old games. However, as the revenue performance of these games tends to stabilize, NetEase still needs to find more blockbusters to continue to grow.
