Over the years, mobile game developers have fought fiercely to attract players, but it has created a problem: Games have grown so large that players can only fit a handful of games on their phones.
According to the analysis of the Japanese community game giant GREE, as developers add more and more complex graphics, voiceovers and richer storylines to the game to attract players to consume, not only the cost of game development has increased, but the size of the game has increased. also continues to expand.
This creates a “win-win” situation where smaller studios may not have room to survive in the next few years, said Yuta Maeda, senior vice president at Gree. That will only get worse, especially with console giant Sony also looking to move into mobile gaming.
In particular: Sony’s popular games tend to be space-hungry.
“Mobile game production will inevitably become more complex, time-consuming and large-scale, which will inevitably lead to larger game programs.” Yuta Maeda said, “Only companies that can keep up with this trend can survive in the market.”
The volume of “Genshin Impact” has exceeded 20GB
Today, the production of top mobile games requires a lot of capital investment, for example, Mihayou Technology’s “Genshin Impact” has invested a budget of 100 million US dollars, which is at the same level as the Hollywood giants. However, while creating more output than ever before, it also takes up a lot of space.
Genshin Impact can take up over 20GB of storage, which is overwhelming for most people’s phones.Because the capacity of mobile phone storage space has not kept up with the development of games, players can only install a few games on their mobile phones.
This has formed a vicious cycle, with fewer and fewer games competing for players’ attention.
“Although players are interested in our games, we find that some of them stop installing our games because their phones are full.” Yoshihide Koizumi, head of marketing for Gree’s latest game, Heaven Burns Red express.
Console gaming giant Sony has announced plans to bring its high-profile PlayStation franchise to mobile platforms. Sony rival Microsoft is also building an Xbox mobile game store. All this adds to the pressure on the freemium business model that Gree and others follow. These publishers rely on in-game items and upgrades to generate revenue, and regularly add more content that players can purchase and play.
The most common solution for developers is to put a basic installer in the app store and then follow the story to download more game content when the player starts the game. GREE used this method in its game Heaven Burns Red. It starts at 1GB, but will expand beyond 10GB as the game progresses.
Storage space is precious
A typical flagship smartphone today starts with 128GB of storage, but many older phones have much less storage. Also, the necessary operating system files take up a good portion of the base space, leaving even less room for larger games.
Also, upgrading storage space is expensive. “As smartphone prices have risen sharply over the years, consumers tend to buy the cheapest version of the latest phone, which means less storage,” said Francisco Jeronimo, vice president of analysis at IDC. Phones with more storage can be 50% more expensive , and most users don’t realize that apps need more space and download more apps.”
Now, relatively small game companies face the threat of being taken over by larger game productions with their huge marketing budgets and influence.
Toyo Securities analyst Hideki Yasuda said, “The only hope is that phone manufacturers realize that this is a critical issue for their ecosystem and offer bigger and cheaper models. “
He said that if mobile phone manufacturers do not change their direction, the future of small mobile game manufacturers will be serious, and it is very likely that they will be acquired.
