As the popularity of mobile Internet has increased globally, many new game players have emerged in various countries, and the rising trend of game players is growing rapidly. This has led many Chinese game manufacturers to expand the international game market. It is understood that at present, the income of China’s overseas game market has shown a very obvious upward trend, and the growth is stable.
According to the revenue of different types of mobile games in the United States in 2021 released by the data analysis website Sensor Tower, games from China firmly occupy the first place with a revenue of 406.3 million dollars (about 2.579 billion yuan), and account for half of the total revenue of other similar games.
In recent years, each game, whether the Blue Archives or Arkights, has been very popular overseas, making game publishers earn a lot of profits, and making game players around the world have a deep understanding of Chinese culture. From the research, we can see that every successful game has a emulators behind it. Almost every game is bound with the emulators, which also shows that the mobile game emulators, as a high-quality channel, has an important influence on the game to go overseas.
The Market Flow of Mobile Game Emulators Has Steadily Increased
Games Emulators are widely used. In terms of the distribution of countries, they are mainly divided into two types of markets. One is the huge flow market composed of Latin American and Southeast Asian countries represented by Brazil, India and Vietnam; The second is the T1 market with high net worth income, represented by the United States, South Korea, Japan, China.
The traffic market represented by Latin America and Southeast Asia has a lot of room for growth and liquidity potential. The high-revenue T1 market, represented by China, Japan, Korea and the United States, is now a competitive place for emulators.
Overview Of High-revenue T1 Market
The high-revenue T1 market of mobile game emulators includes the United States, South Korea, Japan and China, which support nearly 90% of the revenue of the mobile game emulators industry. We will analyze the T1 market from three aspects.
- Device Penetration
As the country with the highest PC penetration rate in the world, the United States has more than 90 computers, which leaves room for the development of the emulator industry. In addition, a large number of highly loyal terminal emulators games can be found in Japan and South Korea. The combination of all these factors lays the foundation for the development of the emulator.
- Willingness to Pay in Games
As a booming market in the game industry in recent years, the willingness of Chinese users to pay is gradually increasing. In particular, emulators users have the characteristics of high net worth and high willingness to pay. Therefore, for regions with a long history of game development, such as the United States, Japan, and South Korea, the cultivation of payment habits has also made the high income of T1 market come naturally.
- Game Categories
According to the analysis of mobile market report in 2022 released by App Annie, the top 3 game categories with the highest income worldwide in 2021 are strategy category, role playing category and team fighting (card category). These high-income games are exactly the most popular heavy game types in T1 region, and the emulators has a wide range of use scenarios. This has also created a strong revenue momentum in the T1 market.
The Global Competition in T1 Market is Increasingly Fierce
It is easy to see from the report that the share of T1 market is crucial for every mobile game emulators, so T1 market has become a arena for many companies. At present, there are six mainstream emulators, five of which are from China, and one is from the United States.
Since 80% of mobile game emulators products come from China, China has become the head of each emulators, and the competition is very fierce. Although in recent years, the overall globalization trend of the industry is obvious, and the competition has begun to spread throughout the T1 market, forming today’s hot situation.
Mobile Games Emulators Market is Unprecedented
- Game Publishers Develop PC Clients
With the rapid increase of mobile game users’ demand for PC scenarios, game manufacturers have begun to attach importance to the user acquisition of mobile games emulator. Now, in order to obtain high net worth users from mobile game emulators, major game manufacturers will invest a lot of money every year.
In recent years, Japanese and Korean game manufacturers led by NCSoft have gradually developed PC versions of games and even independently developed emulators. In particular, in order to let users use their own PC version, some game manufacturers usually technically ban the emulators. This is also a major challenge facing the emulators market.
- Microsoft and Google Participate in Emulators Development
The broad market space is not only found by the major game manufacturers, but also Microsoft and Google have joined the battle in order to improve their own ecosystems. The Android subsystem of Windows 11 can support the direct running of Android APP on computers. On the other hand, Google Play Games PC version to be launched in 2022 can also directly run Android games on computers.
- Updated Users Requirements to Boast Sound Experience
With Microsoft and Google announcing their support in 2021, the competition will become more intense. On the one hand, Microsoft and Google can undoubtedly let a certain number of users use their products. On the other hand, users who play mobile games on PCs need the corresponding functions of the emulators, such as keyboard control, multi account opening, script recording, etc. In this regard, Microsoft and Google are currently unable to meet the needs of users.
Microsoft, Google and even game publishers cannot shake the position of mobile users in the emulators. However, if we spare no effort to fill the gap with their leading technologies, the competition will eventually turn to user experience.
- Metaverse Shown in Gaming Sector
As we all know, Facebook has previously announced that it will transform itself into a Yuanjie company within five years. ByteDance also acquired VR hardware manufacturers for more than 9 billion yuan to enter the yuan boundary race track. As the first stock of Yuanjie, Roblox will be listed in March 2021, and its share price will rise by 50% on the first day.
Game developers (Epic Games) and hardware manufacturers (Nvidia) are gradually laying out their meta worlds. In this sense, the mobile game emulators as the game carrier is likely to seize this trend.
- Cloud Gaming Revolution
The terminal hardware limitation has always been a difficult problem for the mobile game industry at present and even for the future market. However, cloud gaming can break through this limitation, and can bring better immersive experience and interaction effects to users through the enhanced computing capacity and data transmission capacity of cloud servers.
At present, cloud games are mainly limited by higher server costs. However, cloud games may become an important direction of the development of the entire game industry in the future, and it will also be more consistent with the current fragmented time use of users and the high mobility of domestic population.
In Conclusion
With the development of science and technology in recent years, the game gradually emphasizes cross platform play, which proves that the main players in this field need to become first-class more and more. Cross platform play is more likely to become the mainstream, challenging the mobile game emulators.
