This year, Tencent's layout in the shooting category is really a bit outrageous.

How outrageous is it? At the just-concluded Cologne exhibition, Tencent's 22 new products alone accounted for nearly half of the shooting category, and these new products still cover a wide range - in addition to the just-launched "Delta Operation", there are also "Arena Breakout: Infinite" and "Exoborne" for survival and evacuation, and "Dune: Awakening" for shooting + SOC...... At a glance, I can only sigh that it is worthy of Tencent's big hand.

If the time is extended to one year, Tencent will actually have a few more shooting products in reserve, including "Counter War: Future", "Ace Warrior 2" and so on, which are based on its own IP. Most of the above products are terminal games, and the quality is rushing to the 3A level, and some products are generally considered to be able to be the world's top 3A shooting game board wrist.

Not only in terms of quantity, but also from the internal talent tilt, you can also clearly feel Tencent's emphasis on the shooting category this year.

Now the two new Tencent shooting products that are the most concerned by the outside world - "Operation Delta" and "Arena Breakout: Infinite" (Dark Zone Breakout PC), the former is developed by the Linlang Tianshang team of TiMi J3 Studio, led by Yao Yuan, senior producer of Tencent and general manager of J3 Studio; The latter is directly helmed by Zhang Hanjin, president of the Rubik's Cube Studio Group.

Looking back on these years, Tencent has rarely seen such projects led by the big guy himself. According to Tencent, the purpose of putting on such a big battle is to get on the table of the world's top masterpieces.

But if you think about it carefully, it's not quite right, Tencent can bet on more categories, why choose to fight the shooting track that European and American manufacturers are best at?

There are more than 20 projects in ten years, and shooting is also Tencent's best category

Regardless of the difference in the market environment, Tencent has a lot of experience in the shooting category, and it can even be regarded as one of the few "steady wins" track within it - since the agency of "Crossfire" 17 years ago, Tencent's dominance in the domestic shooting market has not decreased, and its performance is much higher than that of other internal categories.

On the one hand, there are enough successful shooting products from Tencent.

Let's talk about terminal games, "ten (several) years veteran" "Crossfire" is still an evergreen that Tencent is proud of. After it, self-developed products such as "Counter War" and "Gun God Chronicle" have also achieved outstanding results in China, not to mention the baton of "Valorant", which has swept the world in recent years.

As for mobile games, it's even more obvious. "CrossFire Mobile Game", "Call of Duty Mobile Game", and "Peace Elite" have dominated the top three in the domestic shooting mobile game market all year round, and the top ten in the global shooting mobile game market in terms of revenue.

Tencent accounts for 5 of the top 10 shooting mobile games in the world in terms of revenue in 2023

Tencent's shooting products cover almost all sub-categories, and the category defense line is impenetrable. Under the strategy of all-round encirclement, Tencent has been eating meat frantically in the domestic shooting market for more than a decade, while other manufacturers only have a share of soup.

On the other hand, Tencent's other categories that are also regarded as successful, such as MOBA and MMO, have a product matrix that is far less dense than the shooting category, and there are only two or three products that have been active in the mobile game market for many years, and the gameplay coverage is narrow, and the exploration of the track is far less than the shooting category.

On the other hand, Tencent is deeply involved in all branches of the shooting category.

Based on the information that has been made public, I have roughly counted Tencent's self-developed shooting products in the past ten years, and found that the number has exceeded 20. Through a simple analysis, it is not difficult to find that in the big category of shooting, Tencent's four self-developed studio groups are deeply involved.

In addition to the Northern Lights, the shooting items of the four major self-developed studios are more than 4, and the most is TiMi Studio, with as many as 8 models. These more than 20 products cover almost all the shooting sub-categories on the market, although not every one of them is successful, but overall it has accumulated rich experience in the research and development of shooting categories for Tencent.

It's worth noting that TiMi, Photon, and Rubik's Cube all have their own types of successful shooter gameplay - TiMi is FPS shooting, Photon is tactical competition, and Rubik's Cube is hardcore shooting. This gives Tencent the ability to "strike at multiple points" in the shooting category, and it is also its hole card on the global table.

European and American manufacturers are fat: they seem to be indestructible, but they are actually full of holes

Speaking of which, there may still be some doubts: How many years have Activision and EA been doing shooting? What quality shooter game to make? What level of your Tencent shooter game is now? Can you fight?

Honestly, I can understand why people think that way. After all, in recent years, most of Tencent's self-developed shooting product specifications are benchmarked against mobile games, which is too normal to be questioned.

In addition, the mainstream overseas shooting market (usually referring to PC and console) has been dominated by high-spec products from Europe and the United States for a long time, resulting in overseas players being extremely sensitive to quality. Shadow, the producer of "Operation Delta", said frankly that if the quality of a shooting product does not reach the top level, "others (overseas players) will not look at you".

Over the years, 3A quality has been like an iron curtain, isolating Chinese manufacturers from the mainstream overseas shooting market. But what few people may be aware of is that this iron curtain has also become the umbrella and fig leaf of those European and American manufacturers, hiding the holes on their bodies.

In fact, in the overseas shooting market, which has been dominated by European and American manufacturers in recent years, there have always been many problems other than quality, and there are two main ones.

First, the buyout system discourages non-IP players from attempting.

It should be emphasized that this is not to say that there is a problem with the buyout system - for some stand-alone products, the buyout system is indeed a business model that is very friendly to players and manufacturers, for example, this year, Black Myth has made a lot of money at the same time, and has also gained a good reputation around the world.

However, for some shooting products that include in-app purchases and focus on PVP, it is worth considering whether the buyout system is necessary. And this seemingly awkward product is particularly common in the overseas mainstream shooting market, typical of EA's "Battlefield 2042".

To be honest, it's really hard to imagine that a shooting game that focuses on PVP, has no plot campaign, and includes in-app purchases can cost nearly 400 yuan to play. If you spend 400 yuan just to experience 3A quality, how many players can have a corresponding high-end PC?

Of course, maybe EA's idea is also very simple, that is, it feels that it spends a lot of money to make a triple-A game, and it is natural to recover the cost through buyout. EA's thinking is very common in the current European and American manufacturers, such as the recent death of Sony's first-party FPS game "Star Agent", and its developer Firewalk.

It's just that the outside world now generally believes that "Agent Starming" died of political correctness, but I think that even if there is no issue of political correctness, the sales of this game may not be ideal.

You know, many high-quality shooters that used to be bought out are now free-to-play, such as Overwatch. Valve's new title, Deadlock, was free-to-play from the start. In the days when you pay $40-$60 for a PVP shooter, it's time to be swept into the dustbin of history — even if it meets the so-called triple-A standard.

Second, the GaaS (Game as a Service) capabilities of European and American manufacturers are insufficient, which is actually far more fatal than the first point, and it is also the biggest breakthrough.

In recent years, this fatal shortcoming of European and American manufacturers has been particularly obvious, because they have been learning from Chinese manufacturers to make live service games over the years, but their understanding of GaaS is only at the stage of "free to play".

A typical example is Activision, which learned from Chinese manufacturers to engage in a free-to-play model at the beginning of "COD 16", and for this reason, "Warzone", an independent battle royale gameplay from the ontology, is free for players to play. However, as the operation time has become longer, the praise rate of "Warzone" has been miserable, and the ontology has also suffered.

There are also a variety of problems that players complain about, some say that the game content is not good, some say that the network crashes, and some people scold Activision for blocking the accounts of green players, but ignore the players who open the hanging...... There are so many bad reviews, it really doesn't look like a blockbuster with tens of millions of sales, and players play while scolding, or because they don't have a choice.

In fact, the stickiness of shooter players is much lower than everyone thinks.

In April this year, Newzoo's "2024 Console and PC Game Report" showed that the game time of players in many shooting sub-categories around the world, including FPS and hero shooting, has declined, and most of these declining time has flowed into the TPS sub-category.

In addition, in recent years, the trade-offs between shooting sub-categories seem to verify the above conclusions. For example, the largest "chicken" category, the data over the years has generally shown a downward trend. At the same time, some new ways to play and new tracks, such as survival to win gold, have seen significant growth.

By all indications, shooter gamers don't seem to be so "clingy" and have a greater willingness to try new creative products. Shooters themselves don't have a very high barrier to entry like MOBAs, and there are many things in common with each other, which also lowers the threshold for shooters to move between different sub-genres.

So, having said all this, Tencent or Chinese manufacturers are shooting at this piece, where is the gap with European and American manufacturers? In addition to a 3A threshold, I'm afraid it's really gone - even in terms of live service, Chinese manufacturers are still leading in an all-round way, and it's no wonder that Tencent will choose to be tough.

In fact, for a manufacturer of Tencent's level, 3A has never been a problem.

You must know that when the TiMi team participated in the Cologne exhibition last year, they only brought a mobile version of "Operation Delta". After deciding to hit the top level, TiMi has already launched a console/PC version that can wrestle with the world's top masterpieces this year, and even if it is full, it will only be a year.

Not to mention that in this process, the team has to reduce the configuration while opening up the three ends, and almost all of them are aimed at the weak links of European and American manufacturers. Combined with Tencent's best GaaS capabilities, as long as the product quality does not fall behind, Tencent has a good chance to snatch a piece of cake from those European and American manufacturers with greater advantages in the future.

In fact, judging from the feedback from the previous tests of Tencent's two most invested products, "Operation Delta" and "Dark Zone Breakout: Infinite", players generally gave good reviews. Yao Yuan even said that 95% of the feedback was positive. I just don't know how Activision and EA will feel when they see this result.

And yesterday, "Operation Delta" was also officially launched on PC and mobile, and it had topped the iOS free list for two days before the launch of the server, which shows that players have high expectations for the game.

Judging from player feedback, there are still many positive reviews, mainly focused on optimization.

Of course, it's not realistic to eat fat in one go. For example, while some players affirm the quality of the game, they complain about the unreasonableness of the game's operators and map design. However, given the game's current free-to-play model and good optimization, they also admit that Operation Delta does have the potential to be a replacement for those European and American products.

In short, the overseas mainstream shooting market seems to be mature and huge, but in fact, there are many leaks - weak GaaS capabilities, weak user stickiness, and an untapped user market...... There is a lot of room for Tencent to play.

ALL IN shooting is a turning point in the globalization of Tencent Games

As you may know, Tencent has been practicing its internationalization strategy over the years. In Ma Huateng's words, it is to seek half of domestic and overseas revenue. In this year's H1 financial report, Tencent's international market revenue increased to 30%, which is one step closer to the goal.

Judging from the financial report, the power source of Tencent's value-added in overseas markets is mobile games, more precisely, thanks to the continued strength of its Finland company Supercell "Burst Squad" and self-developed "PUBG MOBILE".

In fact, since the third quarter of 2019, when Tencent disclosed the revenue of the international game market for the first time, most of the products that are often named and praised and contribute the majority of the revenue of the international game business are located in emerging markets in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and their consumption potential is far lower than that of mature markets such as Europe, the United States, Japan and South Korea.

Therefore, if Tencent really wants to achieve the "half and half" goal proposed by Ma Huateng in the future, I am afraid that it will eventually have to cut into mature markets, especially Europe and the United States.

Yao Yuan previously mentioned in a later interview that high-quality single-player games in mature markets still have the highest priority, followed by multiplayer games, and finally mobile games. Whether it's PUBG MOBILE or Call of Duty Mobile, an important prerequisite for their success is that they have a successful PC game first, so most gamers are willing to try it.

From the perspective of content, shooting, as one of the three major categories of "car gun ball" that European and American players are keen on, has a higher content carrying limit than the other two categories, which is more in line with Tencent's strategic needs for large DAU products. So choose and choose, Tencent only has shooting to choose.

In the long run, it is more inevitable for Tencent to do self-developed 3A shooting terminal games, and it also represents the beginning of its globalization strategy. coincides with the recovery of global PC/consoles this year, and Tencent can be regarded as borrowing a hand in the general environment. All kinds of signs make me think that Tencent's "getting on the international table" is probably not an empty phrase.

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