Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Beijing, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) over the years, mobile game developers have engaged in fierce competition to attract fickle players, but it has caused a neglected problem: ordinary games have become so large that players can only install a few games on their mobile phones.

Japanese social gaming giant GREE predicts that as developers add more complex graphics, dubbing and richer storylines to the games to attract players to spend, they will face rising costs and growing game size. Yuta Maeda, senior vice president of Gree, said in an interview that this has created a winner-takes-all situation and may eliminate small studios in the next few years. As the mainframe giant Sony prepares to enter the field of mobile games, the situation will only get worse. Sony's popular games tend to consume a lot of space.

"the production of mobile games will inevitably become more complex, time-consuming and large-scale, which will inevitably lead to larger applications," Yuta Maeda said. "only companies that can keep up with this trend can survive in the market."

"original God" is bigger than 20GB, and the production of top mobile games requires a lot of money. For example, Miha YouTech's "original God" has a budget of $100 million, which is on a par with Hollywood blockbusters. However, it has not only created a higher output value than ever before, but also left a huge footprint. The game can take up more storage space than 20GB, which is a huge space for most people's mobile phones. As the upgrade of mobile storage space fails to keep up with the development of games, players can only install a few games on their phones, resulting in fewer and fewer games that can compete for players' attention.

Even though players are interested in our game, we find that some of them have given up installing apps because their phones are full. " Said Yoshihide Koizumi, head of marketing for Gree's latest game, Heaven Burns Red.

Console gaming giant Sony has announced plans to bring its high-profile PlayStation series of games to mobile platforms. Sony rival Microsoft is also building a Xbox mobile game store. All of this puts pressure on the free value-added business model followed by Gree and other companies. These publishers generate revenue from in-game props and upgrades, adding more content that players can buy and play on a regular basis.

For developers, the most common response is to place only a basic installer in the app store, and then download more game assets when players start the game. GREE uses this method in its "Heaven Burns Red" game. Its initial capacity is 1GB, if players want to get a complete game experience, the capacity will be expanded to more than 10GB.

Storage space is too expensive Today, the common flagship smartphone starts with 128GB, but many older phones have much smaller storage space. Moreover, the necessary operating system files take up a large part of the basic space, leaving even less space for large games.

Moreover, the upgrade of storage space is expensive. " As smartphone prices have risen sharply over the years, users tend to buy the cheapest versions of the latest phones, which means less storage capacity, "said Francisco Jeronimo, vice president of analytics at IDC, a well-known research firm." phones with more storage space may cost 50% more, and most users don't realize that applications need more space and they download more apps. "

Now that the flagship machine storage space 128GB has started, relatively small game companies face the threat that larger game makers will take over with their strong marketing budget and influence.

"the only hope is for handset makers to recognise that this is a key issue for their ecosystem and provide models with larger capacity," said Hideki Yasuda, an analyst at Toyo Securities. "if they do not change direction, the future of mobile game companies will be grim, and industry consolidation is likely to lie ahead." He said.

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