ChinaJoy 2024

What did I hear?

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CDEC released the《2024 First Half-Year Game Industry Report》None-China

In the first half of the year, self-developed games generated $8.554 billion in actual sales revenue in overseas markets, a year-on-year increase of 4.24%. This growth was mainly due to the emergence of some new blockbuster products that significantly boosted revenue.

Distribution of Overseas Markets and Product Types:

• From January to June, the United States, Japan, and South Korea remained the main overseas markets for China's mobile gaming market, accounting for 33%, 15.66%, and 8.82%, respectively, with a combined total of 57.48%, a slight decrease compared to the previous year. The combined market share of Germany, the United Kingdom, and France was 9.85%, showing a slight increase. Notably, Australia and Italy have entered the top ten in market share.
• Among the top 100 self-developed mobile games by overseas market revenue, strategy games still held the highest share at 32.66%. Role-playing games accounted for 10.48%, showing a significant year-on-year decline.
• The share of simulation games increased from 5.28% last year to 9.97% this year. MOBA games grew from 3.83% last year to 9.07% this year. Idle games rose from 3.95% last year to 7.5% this year. These three categories showed significant revenue growth.
• Previously dominant shooter games dropped to 7.60%, and casual games fell to 3.92%, both showing a noticeable decline in revenue.

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AI Becomes the "Standard Configuration" in Game Development, Increasing efficiency in some tasks by more than 40 times

This year, Tencent launched a new self-developed AI engine with AIGC capabilities in 3D graphics, storytelling, level design, and more, enabling game scene creation and content generation tasks to increase efficiency by over 40 times. Additionally, Tencent has made significant progress in content production pipelines, game character training, and intelligent motion generation. For example, in the mobile game "Naruto," the large-scale reinforcement learning solution for fighting games has reduced the required training time and resources by more than 90%. These theoretical achievements are internationally leading.

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The Russian tech company is further expanding its cooperation with Chinese firms.

Yandex, VK, Runstore featuring prominently at the main booth of CJ.

In the past 1-2 years, the Russian market has undergone significant development and changes in the gaming, finance, and AI sectors. With the exit of some international platforms, the Russian market has presented new opportunities for local and Chinese developers. Russia has a large user base with a population of nearly 140 million, while the entire CIS region has around 270 million Russian-speaking people. This offers enormous market potential for Chinese game developers.

What changes: 

• Previously, Russians drove European and American cars, but now it's Red Flag, Li Auto, Great Wall, Geely, and so on. The situation in the gaming market is quite similar, and it is definitely a very good time for Chinese developers to enter the market.
• When Chinese games are launched in Russia, local users' phones will automatically download RuStore and the corresponding games. RuStore's user base is steadily growing each month. Since its launch in May 2022, RuStore has partnered with thousands of Chinese companies. Currently, the number of monthly active users in Russia has reached 30 million, accounting for one-third of the country's total internet users.
• In the gaming sector, VK saw a 160% increase in Q1 this year compared to Q1 of last year and an 11% increase compared to Q4 of last year, indicating a strong growth trend. VK has also developed effective strategies for promoting traditional businesses. As a result, there is substantial potential for Chinese traditional companies entering the Russian market.

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"Gen AI consumer Apps" are driving new market growth.

• Top 100 Category % (released by a16z)

General Assistant 26% : AI Chat, ChatBox, Poe, Chat AI, ChatGPT, General Mobile Assistant etc...

Content Editing 26% : AI Mirror, Beat.ly, Evoke AI, Face Dance, Hypic, Photo AI, Remove It, etc...

Content Generation 22% :  AI ARTA, ArtMind, EPIK, Lisa AI, Remini, Imagine, Davinci, Revive etc...

Edtech 14% : AI Quran, ELSA, Brainly, Mathway, Photomath, Question AI, QANDA, etc...

Messaging 6%: Bobble AI, Facemoji, Genie, etc...

Companion 4% : Character.ai, Poly.Ai, etc... 

Browser 2%: Microsoft Edge...

• Chatbot and Content generation are the most popular directions chosen by startups.
• In the past 12 months, the following GE AI functions have been used by users in their daily lives:

Information retrieval (e.g. using AI to replace search): 55%

Personalized recommendations (e.g., recommending favorite content/music): 51%

Automatic control (such as autonomous driving, smart home)：43%

Professional services (such as AI course tutoring, AI cancer screening) ：40%

Content creation (such as pictures, videos, music generation) ：38%

Information summary (such as meeting summary, news summary) ：37%

Content enhancement (e.g. text assistance, programming assistance) ：36%

Emotional companionship (such as virtual friends, virtual lovers) ：18%

• The applications that consumers expect most in their daily lives Professional Services (e.g., AI tutoring, medical diagnosis, financial advice):

Tutoring: Customize courses based on individual knowledge levels and learning objectives, offering personalized, human-like guidance.

Medical Diagnosis: Analyze physiological data and samples to provide diagnoses or monitoring, along with treatment recommendations.

Financial Advice: Tailor investment portfolio suggestions according to individual financial status and goals.

• Automated Control (e.g., smart homes, autonomous driving):

Smart Home Robots: Utilizing data and image recognition to assist users with schedule reminders, medication alerts, pet monitoring, and even making emergency calls.

Smart Refrigerators: Equipped with cameras to read expiration dates, remind users to order new items and discard old ones, automatically categorize food items, and recommend recipes based on personalized preferences and historical data.

• Content Creation (e.g., image, video, and music generation):

Image/Video Creation: Generate images and videos tailored to personal preferences through natural language descriptions.

Music Creation: Allows for personalized creation and editing of well-known musical works.

Controllable Plot: Enables real-time adjustment of movie or TV show plots according to viewer preferences.