Zulong Entertainment is facing a more difficult time,

The dividends of dolls and Southeast Asia are about to expire.

From HK$20 billion to HK$1.2 billion, Zulong only took 4 years.

Now, is it going to wake up?

Recently, a new Palu-like game "Mira?bo Go" (formerly known as "PetOCraft"), a new Palu-like game owned by Hong Kong-listed Zulong Entertainment, released test results in some Southeast Asian markets (Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia).

Naturally, all kinds of benefits.

Almost at the same time, it also announced its financial results for the first half of 2024, in the first half of this year, the company achieved operating income of 439 million yuan, an increase of 9.2% compared with 402 million yuan in the same period last year; Adjusted net loss was $120 million, compared to a loss of $215 million in the same period last year, and R&D expenditure was $264 million, down 11.7% from $299 million in the same period last year.

Behind this report card, it seems to indicate that the company does have the ability to continue fighting.

In addition, the financial report highlighted the outstanding performance of the flagship product "In the Name of Shining" worldwide, which has not only ranked in the top ten best-selling iOS games in Chinese mainland for many times, but also continued to attract and consolidate a huge player base through continuous version updates and content innovation.

In particular, the new version of "Mermaid Phantom Song", which was launched on August 7, has created an audio-visual feast through the linkage with the song "Mermaid" by well-known singer Lin Junjie, further improving the game experience of players.

It is understood that Zulong Entertainment was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in July 2020, backed by Perfect World and Tencent investment before listing, focusing on the development of MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game), SLG (simulation game), female-oriented, strategy cards and other types of mobile games.

The market value once exceeded HK$20 billion in the year of listing, and now the market value is less than HK$1.2 billion.

From the content of the report, it can be seen that "In the Name of Shining" is its main reliance on revenue gains.

What is the game's competitive advantage in achieving good performance in the moment?

In addition, Paperfold's "Infinite Warmth" has also started testing this year, also as a "technical stream" in the dress-up game, what kind of challenges will Zulong face in the future? And how to deal with it?

Zulong's overseas revenue accounts for a large proportion of its revenue, can Zulong really pioneer in the overseas market?

In this regard, Li Yutong, a reporter from the Daily Economic News, had an exchange with Shule, and the monkey thought:

Zulong Entertainment is actually facing a more difficult time, after all, the bonus period of Doll and Southeast Asia is about to expire.

As one of the few remaining game companies that came from the stand-alone era, Zulong has produced some high-quality products, but basically as of before the 2010s, that is, the era of terminal games.

In the past, "Anti-Japanese - Bloody War on the Beach", "Anti-Japanese - Bloody War in Burma" and "Perfect World" were all pioneers in the field of stand-alone games and online games.

Since then, in the era of mobile games, perhaps due to some bottlenecks in the transformation from terminal games to mobile games, they have been falling behind, but through overseas expansion, they have maintained a certain vitality.

However, with the acceleration of the momentum of domestic games going overseas, Zulong's online game and mobile game experience that Zulong relied on overseas at the beginning seemed to lag behind.

If there is no innovation and breakthrough, it will be more difficult to follow the rhythm of domestic mobile games in foreign countries.

The biggest competitive advantage of dress-up games is precisely in the female user group, targeting the "doll" complex.

But such a product is easy to homogenize, but there are not many competitors involved, and you can get good benefits.

The biggest challenge is not only the technical impact of friends, but also the addiction problem that this kind of game may bring to underage girls, and cause a certain adverse social impact.

Therefore, the ability to technically speed up the special effects of costume change and the ability to prevent addiction will be a "big thing" that must be carried out at the same time.

Of course, in the overseas market, dress-up games are also expanding, which can exchange some window dividends for Zulong Entertainment.

In addition, some previously developed games can still gain in the Southeast Asian market, where the game industry is relatively weak, through dimensionality reduction.

It's just that the target is Southeast Asia, and in essence, there is also a "lack of confidence" in the global competition of its own game products, especially in the competition in the European and American game markets.

Once the global game industry gets accustomed to the way Chinese mobile games are played, and learn from them and form innovations, the fierce competition will make game companies that go to the "sinking market" to find a respite even more "suffocating".

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