Examining Social Gaming for the Chinese Market

Kevin Li

Mobile Social Games

Mobile Social Game refers to the act of playing a mobile game that requires or promotes interaction between multiple players.

Examples of social games include:

•Card games

•MMORPGs

•Social casino

Current Mobile Gaming Market

• China will overtake the USA in app revenue in the first half of 2016• In 2015, mobile gaming generated revenue of more than $34.8 billion• The average spent per month per mobile user in Asia Pacific has grown from $2.86 to $4.17• The Amount of time users spent on mobile games increased by 57 % from 2012-2015. On

Average they spent 2 hours per day playing.

Smartphone Market in China

• In 2017 about 95% of all mobile phones that are shipped into China will be smartphones. This influx of smartphones will increase the market for mobile gaming even more. Creating more opportunities for company’s to make a presence as well as increasing their profitable.

• Smart phone shipments are currently three times greater to China than the USA.

• The country will become the world’s top smartphone market in terms of penetration, after developed regions such as the United States and European Union, according to industry consultancy Canalys.

Premium or Freemium

Premium apps (or Paid apps): pay for play Freemium apps: free to download but some features inside the app are unavailable until you pay for them.

Popular Mobile Games

Mobile gaming has seen its fair share of overnight sensations and elongated battles to the top of the charts, a few of the most popular games Clash of Clans, Candy Crush Saga, Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja have all had their fair share of fame each staying at the top of the charts for years.

Clash of Clans a very successful mobile game is currently ranked #2 on Top Grossing Games and receives on average 32000 new installs and $1.2 million per day.

Why Successful?

•Although not very graphics reliant have managed success in providing a simple fun experience that a large audience could relate or adapt to

•All provide a fairly unique player experience on mostly original concepts that have not been developed before

PLAYER EXPERIENCE!

Next Waves to Enhance Player Experience

New network: transmit rich and multimedia contents even faster, provide seamless socializing environment

New hardware: better game display and control features

4G and 5G Mobile Network

The 4G mobile network was first deployed in December 2009 and now vastly spreads all metropolitan areas, this network delivers speeds on average of 10MB/s and can range up to 70MB/s in exclusive areas.

Many telecom company's are now making progress on the 5G network and believe that it will be deployed by 2020 boasting speeds of up to 1GB/s, with these speeds connectivity will no longer be a weight holding down the mobile gaming community.

What are the Latest Phones Capable of?

The latest models of the iPhone and Samsung Galaxy have been said to be on par with the previous generation consoles PS3 and XBOX 360, this is significant as there is a vast size difference between a 7 mm thick phone and a 63.5 mm thick console.

The latest phones are said to outperform these consoles not only on graphics and gameplay processing but also in areas like Internet connection speeds all due to their new upgrade components, what this means for the mobile gaming industry is that it is possible to build quality games without the worry of performance issues.

Apple iPhone 6S & 6S Plus

The current iPhone 6S plus harbors a 1080p screen, Apple A8 chip, dual-core 1.4GHz Typhoon CPU, PowerVR GX 6450 GPU and 1 GB of DDR3 RAM.

The iPhone 6S and 6S plus incorporates 3D touch which gives the player another depth into controlling their character or navigating the game they are playing.

Samsungs Galaxy 6 and Edge Plus

The Samsung Galaxy edge has a curved edge screen which allows seamless gameplay that wraps around the screen providing better immersion for the player.

The Rise of VR & AR

Virtual Reality is a rapidly growing industry coming from what barely existed two years ago is now captivating millions of people with its promise of a fully immersive user experience.

-Oculus Rift-Google Glass

New Opportunities to Social Casino Operators

•Massive audience

•Legal in most countries

•Brand awareness

•Money, money, money

What to Expect in the Future

• The increase in prominence of virtual reality. As technology develops, the price should fall and the quality of gameplay and graphics should increase.

• The growth of mobile games is projected to be even more staggering as revenue is expected to reach $74.6 billion by 2020.

• The emergence of mobile gaming streaming. It will likely lead to a significant increase in the amount of mobile gaming content players view.

• An increase of triple A games and High production based games.

• More IP based game. This is for more games to stand out in an oversaturated market.

Summary

• The mobile gaming industry is a booming business and the player experience is key to success

• Next generation mobile network and hardware could significantly enhance the player experience, especially create new social scenes via VR technologies

• With each new flagship phone the possibilities available to developers will also grow in an exponential fashion as the specifications of the devices will no longer be as limiting give more freedom for more graphics intensive gameplay or complex gameplay designs

THANKS