Alibaba sees promise in the mobile space
Alibaba, China’s largest retail organization akin to eBay and Amazon, has announced that it plans to break into the world of mobile games. China has become one of the most promising markets for mobile gaming, partly due to the rapid growth of smartphone and tablet ownership. Alibaba has been seeing a major rise in the potential of the mobile space and is not keen to be left behind by its competitors.
Tencent and Alibaba may clash on mobile games
Alibaba is currently working to develop its own mobile gaming platform. This move likely comes as a response to Tencent’s efforts to make its gratuitously popular WeChat application into a gaming platform. Tencent currently boasts of the strongest presence in China’s mobile sector. The WeChat application has more than 570 million downloads and Tencent itself is behind many of the country’s most popular mobile games. Alibaba is keen to break into the mobile space more aggressively and break the monopoly that Tencent is building.
Developers may find Alibaba’s platform attractive
The organization is providing access to its mobile gaming platform to developers for free this year. This initiative aims to attract game developers to the platform and provide them with the resources they need to develop engaging mobile games that will be associated with Alibaba in the future. The revenue that these games produce will be split, with 70% of the revenue going to developers and 20% going to Alibaba. Approximately 10% of the revenue generated by these mobile games will be donated to rural education initiatives.
Games to be marketed and distributed through Taobao
Alibaba has also committed itself to fully supporting the mobile games that are developed for its platform. The organization will market and distribute these games through its Taobao e-commerce division, which boasts of 700 million users. This will provide developers with a great deal of exposure and help them reach a larger audience that they may not have had access to in the past.
Mobile games are coming to WeChat
Tencent, China’s largest Internet company, has been making aggressive moves in the mobile field recently. The company has been looking to boost the revenue generated from WeChat, China’s most popular social messaging application. WeChat is used by over half of the smartphone and tablet owners in China and the application is making its way to other markets beyond the country’s borders. Tencent believes that it can boost the revenue of WeChat by making various updates to the application and adding new features, such as mobile games.
WeChat brings social elements to mobile games
The company has noticed that mobile games are quite addictive to consumers throughout China. Tencent believes that this creates an ideal environment for consumers to compete with one another on mobile games through the WeChat application, adding a social element to these games. Users of WeChat will not be charged to play the mobile games associated with the application. There are various features that are included in these games that do come at a price, however. These in-game purchases can unlock additional content for those interested in spending money on the games they are interested in.
Consumers may make in-game purchases due to competition with friends
Tencent expects that competition will be the main reason consumers spend money on mobile games. WeChat is a social platform, allowing more than 300 million users throughout China to connect with one another in real-time. Tencent believes that the allure of “one-upping” friends could be a driving force behind in-game purchases. Those that do purchase additional content or advantages in mobile games establish a slight lead over their friends and this may encourage others to follow suit so as not to be left behind.
Consumers are notoriously fickle when it comes to mobile games
While mobile games have proven to be a lucrative sector for the game industry as a whole, consumers are notoriously fickle when it comes to this type of gaming. Few mobile games have the ability to hold a consumer’s attention for prolonged periods of time. While games like “Candy Crush Saga” manage to generate a great deal of revenue, consumers tend to move quickly from game to game in order to find a better experience. WeChat may need to support a wide variety of mobile games if it wants to generate revenue in this way.
