I don’t know if you have noticed that in a corner, Tencent and Byte are secretly fighting again.
Just some time ago, Douyin gave itself a hard blow in order to grab business. They officially announced that starting from April 1st, they will launch a new Douyin mini-game in-app purchase revenue sharing policy, and a new “reduced version of the in-app purchase revenue policy” has been added. The intensity of this new policy is equivalent to tens of billions of subsidies in the small program industry.
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This makes people wonder, didn't ByteDance just give up on games, why did it turn around and spend so much effort on mini-program games? In fact, mini program games have quickly become the mainstream of the current game market, and may even overtake APP mobile games.
If Douyin doesn't put some real effort into it, the soup won't be as hot as it is. Almost every once in a while, mini program games can create an industry “miracle” for everyone. In 2018, there was “Tiaoyitiao”, in 2021, “Synthetic Watermelon”, in 2022, there are “Sheep” and “The King of Salted Fish”.
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According to Guohai Securities' calculations, the company behind “The King of Salted Fish” has achieved an estimated total domestic revenue of 1.233 billion in 2022.
The popular opening of mini-program games has even made life better for the development engines behind it. In the past, Unity almost killed the old 2D game development engine like Cocos. But now, things have turned. Rui, a brother in our game group, commented: h5 games have risen from the bottom of the contempt chain, and it’s Cocos’ turn to look down on Unity.Yanglegeyang is recruiting cocos development engineers
Even Meituan, which delivers food and engages in local life, held a conference for game developers at the end of last year.Meituan mini game entrance
The platform has become like this, not to mention the game manufacturers. Everyone who can have a stake in it has jumped into the market.
Last year, I contacted a game company. At that time, they were still betting on the Douyin barrage game, but now it has long been transformed into a mini program.
However, what is really adding fuel to the fire of mini programs are the traditional game companies that are turning around. Put the traditional mobile game APP into the mini program.We can see that in 2023, there will be a concentrated outbreak
As for why this transformation occurred, the answer given by interviewee Xiao P is also very simple: “The threshold is low and the investment cost is minimal.” The first is that the development cost is very low, and the existing game core and values can be applied, and the theme packaging is changed. It can be baked directly.
Little P also politely told Jun Ming, the negative reviewer, that this is simply called: skin change.
Moreover, the purchase cost of mini games is much lower than that of apps. After so many years of development, APP mobile games have long reached a bottleneck. Even SLG, a high-recharge game manufacturer that clings to its big brother, has complained to bad reviewers that it is getting harder and harder to buy users now.
But the users on the mini program are not just these old players. They have also attracted a large number of people who have never played APP mobile games, especially arousing the competitiveness of a group of users aged 40 and above.
In addition, the feature of mini-games[click to play]also makes purchasing a lot easier. We saw a mobile game advertisement before and thought the content was good. You need to jump to the mall first, then download the app, and finally register an account before you can start the game.
But now after seeing a mini-game advertisement, you only need to click on the video and jump directly to the game to play. The fewer steps there are between getting an ad and converting into a player, the higher the efficiency of conversion and the more likely the ad will be successful.
For example, for the game “Little Ant Kingdom” launched by Sanqi Interactive Entertainment, the streaming material of the mini program in the first quarter last year was almost double that of the APP.
This shows that the purchase volume of the mini program is very effective, so it continues to add more. In the end, the mini program created over 10 million monthly sales for Sanqi.
In addition to low R&D costs and low purchase costs, its maintenance costs are also much lower than traditional APPs. Many people criticize that such small games are not nutritious, such as making a sheep or synthesizing a big watermelon. Many people give up after playing for a while.
But Little P doesn't care at all. He thinks another benefit of mini programs is that manufacturers don't actually need to spend too much energy maintaining old players.
The game in Little P’s hands can now maintain tens of thousands of daily users without much purchase. It is precisely because of this low-maintenance feature that manufacturers can “harvest” players as quickly as possible.
For example, in order to win over other manufacturers, Xiao P officially launched a 0.1% off game. In other words, all recharges in the game are discounted by 0.1%. When others make a first deposit of 1 yuan, they will directly raise the price to 0.01 yuan.
In domestic mobile games, the “low-level players” who are not even considered as monetizers have transformed into big monetizers in their games. I have tried it myself. With a basic charge of 5 yuan, I can speed through the first 300 levels. Seeing this, you may be curious, can they really make money with such a low recharge amount?
There is no need to worry at all. Little P revealed that when the game was first launched, he made a net profit of 2 million in a month after deducting millions of purchase costs. That’s right, a few cents of recharge put millions into their pockets.
It saves money in all aspects such as research and development, purchase volume, and maintenance. In addition, it is still on the rise. Manufacturers can only “harvest” boldly and have a large amount of revenue. No wonder manufacturers, big and small, are covetous of this piece of fat.
In the early days, the market was still relatively young. There are only games like Synthesize Watermelon and Jump that do not require a version number and can be developed quickly and launched online in 1-2 months. In contrast, the profitability of the game will be slightly lower, and revenue can only be obtained from advertising exposure.
Now that these game veterans are gone, they have brought in a large number of regular troops with version numbers, allowing mini program games to enter a mixed doubles mode of in-app purchases + advertising revenue. The mature money-making model not only allows prostitute players to become stronger by watching advertisements, but also allows big brothers with money in their pockets to find an entrance to spend money to recharge.
In more than a year from the beginning of 2022 to August 2023, the daily turnover of mixed monetization games has tripled.The recharge entrance of Sanqi Interactive Entertainment's “Xundao Daqian”
Now you covet my business, and I covet your traffic. This tug-of-war will probably last for a long time. Although the bad reviewers can’t imagine a scenario where mini-program games can really compete with mobile game apps. But the entire market has expanded to this point, and the defection of traditional manufacturers proves that users have made their choice. With the combined efforts of both companies, there is likely to be something good to see in the small program battlefield this year.
Pictures and data sources:
CICC | Mini-game: Wave after wave, Nuggets’ incremental space
Hedgehog Commune: Douyin offers a “91st split”, is the mini-game price war about to begin?
Guohai Securities: In-depth report on the mini-game industry: Increasing market with great potential