In 2024, the mini game market will grow rapidly, and Sanqi Games will be even more direct, defining mini games as the company's "third growth pole".

You must know that in Gamma Data's "2023 Global Mobile Game Market Enterprise Competitiveness Report", Sanqi Mutual Entertainment ranks among the top 7 global game companies.

How fast is the development of mini games? It is bound to become a new battlefield for game giants, and small and medium-sized developers must hurry up!

You may wonder, why dare you assert this?

The cake of the mini-game is getting bigger and bigger

At the beginning of April, the huge engine showed that the mini game market will exceed 60 billion yuan in 2024, and ByteDance and Tencent Games have increased the layout of the mini game ecosystem.

After 3 months, according to the data trend of the sustained and high-speed growth of mini games in the first half of the year, as well as the 300% revenue growth of the mini game market in 2023, some institutions believe that the mini game market is far more than 60 billion, and can even reach 80 billion, and it is expected that the mini game can exceed 100 billion in 2~3 years.

What is the concept of a 100-billion-level market?

According to data from the Gamma Data Game Working Committee, the annual revenue of China's game market in 2023 will be 302.964 billion, which is the first time to exceed 300 billion. Among them, mobile games were 226.860 billion, accounting for 74.88% of the total revenue.

At the current rate of development, we boldly assume that if the mini game enters the 100 billion mark by 2026, it will share the mobile market with APP games, and even enter the situation of competing for users. Isn't the cake big enough for the mini-game?

And in the current overall economic downturn, can the giants not salivate when they see it?

The R&D cost of Mini Games is controllable, and the return on investment far exceeds expectations

According to data released by DataEye, the number of active users of WeChat IAA games reached 500 million in Q1. The IAA casual mini-game category, represented by "Sheep", occupies more than 70% of the WeChat Play and popularity list.

From the WeChat Mini Game Popularity List and Play List in May, it is found that there are many low-cost IAA Mini Games that continue to dominate the list and become the main force driving the growth of the market.

Some people may scoff at the "super simple" game of "Sheep a Sheep", which is just a special case of luck. However, from the analysis of the list games, the unique elimination gameplay of sheep like has become an independent category.

1. In terms of expression, from 2D to 3D, there are derives such as "Catch the Big Goose" and "Sheep a Sheep" to compete for the TOP1 throne.
2. In terms of game materials, "Eat, Bump, Eliminate and Eliminate", which are derived from national-level IP mahjong, have long occupied the TOP10 position on the play list.

In addition to the "super simple" like "Sheep", there is also an IAA 100-million-level assembly line manufacturer in the list - Changsha Finger Color Network!

From "Super Decompression Hall" to "You Hit a Hammer", "About Staying Me", and "Mind Arena" are all very lightweight IAA games, developed using the Cocos Creator engine, and have been playing the top 20 or even top 10 and top 5 on the list for three consecutive months.

Looking at the picture above, this result is really amazing, and it is completely a rhythm of money grabbing!

You must know that on April 24 this year, at the WeChat open class, Yao Xiangquan of Changsha Finger Color shared the title of "Super Decompression Hall", a small game with a turnover of more than 100 million: "Super Decompression Hall, Different Puzzle Sorting".

At the same time, Changsha Finger Color also accepted an exclusive interview with WeChat mini games. Through the video, the author observed that the person in charge of the finger color market, Mao Yu revealed two data:

1. The highest daily activity of the whole platform is 500~6 million;
2. The top 10 of the WeChat play list has been maintained for more than 1 month;

The above two figures are worth writing down in a small notebook, which can become a reference line for hundreds of millions of flow products!

After this battle, Changsha Finger Color continued to replicate its previous success on the IAA mini game. Subsequently, the newly launched "Hammer and Screw" series dominated the TOP10 of the popularity list for 3 consecutive months.

There are many mysteries in the IAA rankings that are worth excavating, so I won't go into them in detail due to space limitations. Let's take a look at what inspiration is from IAA+IAP's best-selling list.

The customer acquisition cost of mini games is only 1% of that of APP mobile games, and the competition for medium and heavy games is fierce

On June 12, Game Gyro interviewed Zhao Jianfeng, the producer of Giant Online Games, and the mini-game "Journey of Kings IP" entered the game "King's Journey" into the TOP6 of WeChat's best-selling list.

Zhao Jianfeng revealed that for a game like "Journey", which has been IP for nearly 20 years, the cost of acquiring customers per user of its APP "Original Journey" is about 200 yuan, while the cost of small games is only about 20 yuan, and the cost has plummeted by 90%, which means that with the same cost, more people can feel the charm of the journey.

Looking at the TOP20 best-selling list, it is no longer a category dominated by IAA advertising monetization, but an IAP+IAA hybrid game. In terms of gameplay, it is mainly a medium-heavy game that creatively stitches the core gameplay such as RPG, SLG, cards, simulation management, treasure chest opening, roguelike mowing, and tower defense.

The continuous iteration of large-scale games means the continuous evolution of mini-game platforms and game engines. To do this, we have compiled a count of the game engines on these lists, as shown in the table below:

3 game engines are domestic, and Cocos has the highest proportion at present, and it is open source and free, which is the only one that can compete with foreign engines Unity. According to current statistics, there are dozens of mini games with more than 100 million turnover developed using the Cocos engine.

Through the above well-known games, it can be seen that the mini-games are no longer "small"! This is not only in terms of the number of users and the size of the market, but also in the art and gameplay of the game.

There are a lot of SLG and simulation games, and you can hardly feel any difference from APP games. With the entry of game giants, the competition in the IAP medium and heavy mini game categories will continue to intensify.

The soil of small games is maturing day by day, and domestic going to sea is more managed

Some small and medium-sized developers may worry that they will lose their survival space under the pressure of giants! But the author thinks that there is no need to worry about it at all, why do you say that? There are the following points:

1. First of all, among the 1 billion daily active users of WeChat, there are still a large number of non-gamers waiting to be developed, and they do not overlap with APP game users.

2. According to the survey, more than 80% of gamers experience gaming fatigue, and with age and life pressure, it is difficult to play some moderate to heavy games as high as before. There are a lot of people who are looking for games with light gameplay, and mini-games are just right for that.

3. In addition to WeChat and Douyin, hardcore alliances are also actively laying out their own mini game ecology. Cocos is the technical base for these mobile phone manufacturers to provide mini game Runtime.

4. You are familiar with Taobao, Alipay, Meituan, Baidu, Kuaishou, QQ...... Anyway, almost all the big apps you can think of are developing a mini-game ecosystem. Many students who enter large factories should have a good income, and an annual salary of one million is not a dream.

The above is just the ecological situation of domestic mini games, and let's take a look at the development momentum of domestic mini games going overseas.

4399 "Adventure Wars" overseas APP "Legend of the Mushroom Brave" quickly reached the top of the best-selling lists.

According to Sensor Tower data, "The Legend of the Mushroom Brave" ranked third on the list of overseas income in April and May.

According to AppMagic statistics, the revenue of "Legend of the Mushroom Brave" grew rapidly in March, with a total revenue of 54.6 million US dollars, equivalent to about 393 million yuan, and an overseas monthly turnover of nearly 400 million yuan.

In addition, YouTube recently released a notice that the mini-game feature Playables was officially launched on all platforms. This is the second entry of the head video/social platform after Facebook, TikTok, and Line.

With the launch of the mini game function on platforms such as YouTube, it provides new opportunities for domestic mini games to go overseas. Domestic developers, on the other hand, can learn from the mature ecology of WeChat and Douyin to explore the internationalization model of mini games.

To sum up the current situation of the Mini Game ecosystem, we believe that the Mini Game market has huge room for growth, and it will be a market with unlimited potential to be explored.

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