Through the analysis of game data in recent years, many open world and strategy games have begun to merge. ACGN games have become the mainstream of the global game market, which is more in line with the overdue of game players. Among many game categories, the popularity of ACGN games is far ahead.
Throughout the global game market, ACGN is also the best developed game category. Especially in the European and American markets, Tower of Fantasy and Goddess of Victory: Nikke appeared after “Genshin Impact”, which greatly continued the popularity of categories and set off a new round of ACGN game trend around the world. Compared with the sluggish game market in the past two years, the ACGN category game really brings hope to the gaming industry.
Outstanding Performance at Home & Abroad
In April 2022, the ACGN ARPG mobile game Aether Gazer, launched by the co-developer of Azur Lane, was officially released for public beta. As the first “decent” ACGN product to be released in the domestic market in 2022, the game’s debut has no suspense to reach the top of the iOS free list, and the App Store’s recommendation today, and then it has all the way to the top of the iOS best-selling list.
In contrast, the performance of another new ACGN work, Path to Nowhere, is more eye-catching. According to the officially released data, after the game was launched in August 2022, it was firmly ranked first in the App Store and the free list of games, and successfully won the 8th in the iOS best-selling list on the first day. According to the rough estimation of third-party data, the cumulative revenue of the Chinese market has exceeded 200 million yuan more than one month after the game was launched.
In less than three months, this highly popular new work quickly landed in the overseas market. Within the one-month reservation period, the global reservation volume of Path to Nowhere has exceeded 2 million. After going online, it won the first place in the free list of many countries at one stroke, and finally took the lead in getting the seventh place in the iOS best-selling list in South Korea. At the same time, with the excellent performance of Path to Nowhere, the publisher of this game also entered the top 30 revenue list of Chinese mobile game publishers in November released by Sensor Tower for the first time, and ranked fourth with the fastest growth in overseas revenue.
Not only “Path to Nowhere”, but also many products led by Chinese game companies have achieved good results overseas. For example, “Tower of Fantasy” won the first iOS free list in the United States, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan of China on the first day of its launch, and also ranked top 10 in more than 90 countries and regions around the world. With reference to the data of Sensor Tower, the “Tower of Fantasy” estimated the running water of nearly 300 million yuan in August. Driven by this, Tencent’s mobile terminal revenue increased by 2% month-on-month in August; Perfect World mobile revenue increased by 34%. We can also find this game from the redfinger cloud phone. Players can quickly play Tower of Fantasy with redfinger.
In November, the first release of “Goodness of Victory: Nikke” released by Level Infinite ranked fifth in the global App Store and Google Play mobile game download list, and topped the best-selling list of App Store in South Korea. After 7 days of service opening, the game still remains in the top 10 of the download lists in Japan and Thailand and the best-selling list in 21 countries/regions such as Japan, South Korea and the United States. According to the data of Sensor Tower, the revenue of Goddess of Victory: Nikke in the first month exceeded $100 million, which is very shocking.
Under the leadership of the ACGN games “Tower of Fantasy” and “Goddess of Victory: Nikke” released by Tencent Level Infinite, ACGN games have had a great impact on the overseas market. However, in the past, the industry generally felt that Tencent did not understand the ACGN category of games, but now it directly incarnates itself as the global publisher of ACGN games, and has achieved good results. For example, “Goddess of Victory: Nikke” has driven Tencent’s overseas revenue share to increase by 12.5%, refreshing the external perception.
Technology Graphic Quality Matter
Since 2022, with the high popularity of ACGN in the overseas market, various game companies around the world have launched a number of outstanding ACGN novelty games, and there are many products that exceed expectations. For example, “Seven Burns Red” and “Memento Mori,” can be said to be the largest ACGN blockbuster in the Japanese market in 2022.
The ACGN game “Seven Burns Red” jointly developed by Key and WFS did not disappoint the outside world. The game was launched in Japan in February. It topped the free list of the local App Store on the day it was launched. The next day, it also successfully entered the top 30 of the best-seller lists. After that, the best-seller list was very strong. At the same time, according to the data of Sensor Tower, the revenue of games (including Android and Apple) in March was about $22 million.
Memento Mori, owned by the Japanese developer Bank of Innovation, is the most discussed Japanese ACGN mobile game in the second half of the year. After its debut, Memento Mori directly ranked No. 1 and No. 4 on Japan’s iOS free list, and won No. 4 and No. 7 on the best seller list in Hong Kong and Taiwan, China, China. It also reached No. 10 on the iOS best seller list in South Korea, and even led Bank of Innovation’s share price to rise for five consecutive trading days. Official data also showed that the cumulative revenue of “Memento Mori” was 1.8 billion yen and the number of downloads reached 1 million.
In South Korea, in addition to the aforementioned “Goddess of Victory: Nikke” developed by Shift Up Studio, the open world MMO “Gran Saga” performed well. The widely used UE4 research and development of this game has ensured the overall quality of the game, and once topped the best-selling list of iOS in South Korea, with a monthly peak of nearly 150 million yuan and a cumulative revenue of nearly 1 billion yuan.
As we all know, MMO games will take up a lot of storage space on your smartphone and affect the performance of your phone. If you install multiple games, your phone will not work properly. In this context, virtual Android can only appear on mobile phones, which solves the dilemma for game players.
As mentioned earlier, MMO games may consume a lot of storage space in smart phones. If players want to play more games on mobile phones, they need to boast of higher specifications than usual. In this context, virtual Android smartphones may be a better choice for users to solve these problems. At present, various cloud phone platforms are available in the industry, such as Redfinger Cloud Phone, LD Cloud Phone, Eclac Cloud Phone, etc.
Recently, Metaverse World, a subsidiary of Netmarble F&C, also released an ACGN game Grand Cross: Metaworld, which is based on the Sui blockchain network and uses Unreal Engine 5.
In addition, in July 2022, the ACGN game “#Me”, owned by Clover Games, a Korean start-up game company, made a small splash. With more than 2 million videos on YouTube, the number of pre-launch appointments for this product developed by UE has reached more than 1.5 million. On the first day of its launch, it directly ranked the fourth in the US App Store (free) list and the first in the app free list.
Recently, Metaverse World, a subsidiary of Netmarble F&C in South Korea, also released an ACGN game “Grand Cross: Metaworld” based on the Sui blockchain network and developed by using the illusory engine 5, and released PV, which has caused considerable influence in the gaming industry.
In Conclusion
Now, the ACGN category games seem to have changed again: the way of creation has changed, and new themes such as city weirdo have emerged. At the same time, the production process is also changing. For example, “Seven Burns Red” has achieved success according to the plot. Through the use of sound music and graphics, Memento Mori has achieved more than expected results. This also means that the emphasis on higher dimensional technologies such as the open world is not the only solution for ACGN games, and has refreshed the public’s ideas.
