Over the years, mobile game developers have fought fiercely to attract fickle players, but it has caused an overlooked problem: the size of ordinary games has become so large that players only Several games can be installed on the phone.
Japanese social gaming giant GREE expects to face rising costs and ballooning game sizes as developers add increasingly complex graphics, voice acting and richer storylines to their games to attract players to spend. That creates a winner-take-all situation that could wipe out smaller studios in the coming years, Gree senior vice president Yuta Maeda said in an interview. That’s only going to get worse as console giant Sony prepares to move into mobile gaming. Sony’s popular games tend to be space-hungry.
“The production of mobile games will inevitably become more complex, time-consuming and large-scale, which will inevitably lead to larger application volumes,” Yuta Maeda said. “Only companies that can keep up with this trend will be able to market survive.”
Genshin Impact exceeds 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 on par with Hollywood blockbusters. However, it has also left a huge footprint while creating a higher output value than ever before. The game can take up more than 20GB of storage, which is a huge amount of space on most people’s phones. Since the upgrade of phone storage space has not kept pace with the development of games, players can only install a few games on their phones, resulting in fewer and fewer games that can compete for players’ attention.
“Original God”
“Even though players are interested in our games, we find that some of them have given up installing apps because their phones are full,” said Yoshihide Koizumi, head of marketing for Gree’s latest game, Heaven Burns Red.
Console gaming giant Sony has announced plans to bring its high-profile PlayStation franchise to mobile platforms. Sony’s rival Microsoft is also building an Xbox mobile game store. All of 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 buy and play.
The space occupied by major games, “Genshin Impact” reaches 20GB
The most common workaround for developers is to just put a basic installer in the app store and then download more game assets when players start playing. GREE used this approach in their Heaven Burns Red game. It starts at 1GB and will expand to over 10GB if players want the full gaming experience.
Storage space is too expensive
A common 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, the upgrade of storage space is expensive. “As smartphone prices have risen sharply over the years, users tend to buy the cheapest version of the latest phone, which means less storage,” said Francisco Jeronimo, vice president of analysis at IDC, a leading research firm. , “The price of a phone with more storage space can be 50% higher, and most users don’t realize that apps need more space, and they will download more apps.”
The current flagship storage space starts at 128GB
Now, relatively small game companies face a threat that bigger game productions will take over with their massive marketing budgets and clout.
“The only hope is that phone makers realize this is a critical issue for their ecosystem and offer larger-capacity models,” said Hideki Yasuda, an analyst at Toyo Securities. “If they don’t change direction, the future of mobile game companies will be grim, and industry consolidation is likely to lie ahead,” he said.
