1.     Lilith Games launches publishing brand Farlight Games

THE COMPANY WILL BE BASED IN SINGAPORE

•  The new publishing brand will help to deliver it's titles worldwide
• The publishing division is set to release upcoming releases of Dislyte(3D CBG & RPG), Farlight 84(Battle Royale TPS Shooting Games), Boom Party(Social Party Game), and an unannounced title
• The launch of Farlight Games represents a significant upgrade to the strategy of global localization
• Farlight Games will serve not only to publish Lilith Games' titles, the company also said it will do the same for other global game creators as well
• Insight:

1. The New brand is based on Lilith’s most important game: Farlight
2. There are more and more Chinese companies are shifting to SG to open global game publishing brands. Such as Tencent’s Level infinite & Mihoyo’s HoYoverse
3. IGG, Yoozoo also has their own branch offices in Singapore
4. In a certain extent, Singapore can be said to be the Canada of Asia, attracting global game and Internet manufacturers to gather; However, unlike Canada, Singapore has a small land area and a small population. In fact, it is difficult to support such a huge enterprise's demand for talents. Many Chinese companies who go to Singapore to open up branches also recruit talents from China or outside Singapore
5. The reason why many companies set up their global game business headquarters in Singapore is similar to the reason why many companies seeking to go overseas set up a location in Hong Kong. As a country and city with a high degree of internationalization and beneficial comes to tax, although Singapore is not a good location for R&D bases, it is very beneficial to the development of the distribution business
6. With the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the influence of geopolitics on the game industry has become increasingly prominent. Compared with Eastern Europe, Latin America, SEA regions, Singapore is also more stable than these countries
7. Singapore is likely to rank among the TOP5 in the global game industry in the future, driving a new round of global game market structure

2.     Perfect World Q1 22 Game business profit: US$130M, YoY+ 102%

MMO OEPN WORLD WAIFU GAME FANTASY TOWER GAINED GREAT SUCCESS

•  FY 2021

1. Total Revenue: US$1.3B

• Q1 22

1. Total Revenue: US$322M
2. Game business profit: US$130M

• Game Genre Focus & Game product performance

1. MMO mix with other genre & CBG mix with other genre
2. Fantasy tower: First month new users reached 10 million, first month rev reached US$76M
3. New products line: Zhu xian 2, perfect new world, one punch man: world

3.     NetEase to end battle royale title in June

NON F2P ACTION RPG MOBILE TITLES

• Chinese gaming giant NetEase has decided to shut down its battle royale title, Rules of Survival, on June 27 after nearly five years of operations. The firm did not specify a reason for the closure
• The title is a battle royale-style game similar to Fortnite, where up to 300 people play in an arena until there is only one player left standing
• Meanwhile, NetEase shares jumped 4% after Chinese regulators approved 45 game titles for monetization earlier this month amid the country’s sweeping crackdown on the gaming industry

4.     Elon Musk sells Tesla shares worth US$4b after Twitter buy

TWITTER CEO MAY GET $42M IF AXED AFTER MUSK DEAL

• Elon Musk has sold Tesla shares worth nearly US$4 billion in the two days after agreeing to buy Twitter for US$44 billion, according to the electric vehicle firm’s regulatory filings
• Before the share sale, Musk owned a nearly 17% stake in Tesla, or more than 172 million shares
• He will make Twitter a privately held company when the transaction is completed later this year, pending regulator approval

5.     A Talk with CEO of Playtika: Mobile gaming sees more changes in 6 months than other industries see in years

WAR IN UKRAINE, VENTURE CAPITAL INVESTMENTS HAVE SLOWED AS THE PUBLIC MARKETS GET CHOPPY, TECH STARTUPS ARE SEEING VALUATIONS STARTING TO DROP ARE 3 MAIN PROBLEMS IN GAME INDUSTRY AFTER PANDEMIC

• Robert Antokol is CEO of Playtika, a mobile game firm with projects like Slotomania and a US$7.3 billion valuation, below are some highlights of his insights of game industry now and forward
• Pandemic’s influence

1. During the pandemic, it was a huge successful year for gaming companies
2. In the last three months, everything came to a stop. Mobile game companies saw that it wasn’t easy to grow revenue per user anymore, as it was at the beginning of the pandemic. The cost per install, or the advertising cost to gain a new user, has doubled in the last 12 months

• Playtika’s strategy

1. Playtika belives game companies can drive retention higher with live operations (live ops), such as tournaments or holiday events or other new content in existing games
2. Keeping your existing players happy is better than spending a lot of money on acquiring new players
3. Playtika also invested heavily in AI technology that can help it understand user behavior better and what details lead to better retention
4. Playtika also believes the IDFA transition for Playtika was better. AI technology helped Playtika understand what was happening in games in a shorter time
5. Playtika believes that Blockchina tech can be applied to existing games, rather than brand new block chain games

6.     How Tencent is building a global game production system

TENCENT IS ON THE WAY TO TRANSFORM GLOBAL GAME MARKET 

• Building a global production system

1. Tencent’s major goal is to build a worldwide ecosystem that integrates game development and publishing systems. In part, that means rather than absorbing the studios they acquire, Tencent aims to partner with them （TC used to try to do joint-operation with their investment companies but seem it didnt work well）
2. Many of these studios have strong ambitions to create next-gen games and IP that are more immersive — and expensive — than anything they’ve created in the past
3. Tencent offers mobile development and operations expertise, and can support cross-platform efforts

• Exploring new models and new mechanics

1. Tencent is doing a lot of systemic restructuring of the global business to continue to stay on top
2. They’re building fully functional local publishing teams this year to actively manage publishing activities in each local market. That will help them pay more attention to local users and their needs, to help fuel both advertising and marketing as well as game development
3. Interview with Tencent Link

7.     Blizzard will reveal a new mobile Warcraft game on May 3

WARCRAFT MOBILE GAME IS COMING

• Blizzard announced today that it will show off a new mobile game set in the Warcraft universe on May at 10 a.m. Pacific at this site.
• Before Microsoft’s bid to buy Activision Blizzard, the publisher was in the midst of a strategy to bring more of its IP to phones. This included games like Call of Duty Mobile, Crash Bandicoot: On the Run, and the upcoming Diablo Immortal

8.     Diablo Immortal launches on June 2 for mobile and PC 

CROSS-PLAY AND CROSS-PROGRESSION

• Blizzard finally gave Diablo Immortal a launch date. The mobile take on its action RPG franchise is coming out on June 2
• But Blizzard surprised by revealing that Immortal is also coming out to PC, with cross-play and cross-progression, on that same day

9.     Sensor Tower: The total revenue of global strategy mobile games in Q1 was US$4.3 billion, and the 4X strategy mobile games is the top grossing game genre 

THE 4X SLG BATTLE GAMES ACCOUNTED FOR 50% OF TOTAL SLG GAMES REVENUE

•  Q1 22 - SLG Games Global

1. Quarterly revenue of global SLG mobile games increased by more than 30% compared with pre-pandemic with US$4.3B
2. App Store and Google Play revenue accounted for 68% and 32% respectively
3. Q2 2020 SLG Games download: 440 million

• Q1 22 – 4x Match Battle Games Global

1. The proportion of global 4X strategy mobile game downloads has increased year by year, reaching 32% by 2021, highest proportion of downloads in SLG game genre in many major markets
2. Comparing different regions, it can be seen that MOBA mobile games are particularly popular in Asia
3. 4X strategy and MOBA mobile games contributed 52% and 23% of the revenue share respectively in 2021, also showing a YoY growth trend
4. 4X strategy mobile games account for more than 60% of the revenue in the European and American markets, much higher than other subgenres
5. Since 2019, the 4X strategy sub-category has maintained more than 50% of the top 10 in the annual best-selling SLG mobile game list
6. Three Kingdoms: Strategy is the Top grossing 4X Match Battle games Global
7. By revenue, US is the largest market for 4X strategy mobile games, contributing US$650 million in revenue in Q1 22 and China & Japan ranked 2nd & 3rd
8. By downloads, Brazil is the second largest market for 4X strategy mobile games with 10 million downloads
9. 4X strategy mobile games are popular in India, SEA regions, and LATAM