Author | Yuhang

Edit | Ji Ran

Recently, Tencent will wake up laughing when I dream.

On the one hand, taking advantage of the east wind, after the official announcement of access to DeepSeek on WeChat on February 16, the AI application ingots surpassed the bean bag counterattack and became the second; On the same day, the analyst agency Sensor Tower released a report that the revenue of "Honor of Kings" will return to the peak in January 2025, not only sitting on the top 1 of the global mobile game revenue again, but also setting a record of the second highest monthly revenue in game history.

The market's sentiment also received immediate feedback: Tencent's share price rose in response to the next day (17th), opening nearly 7% higher, once returning to HK$500. By the close of trading on February 21, Tencent's Hong Kong stock had risen more than 6%, and its share price reached HK$517, a new high in the past four years.

Behind the new high share price, it is due to the rise of the business. As the largest game manufacturer in China, Tencent's performance during this year's Spring Festival is undoubtedly very impressive.

In addition to "Honor of Kings", a number of Tencent-based mobile games ushered in a flow of water during this Spring Festival holiday, with "Peace Elite" and "CrossFire" surging global revenue by 267% and 421% respectively in January. Although "Golden Shovel War" and "Dungeons & Warriors: Origins" (DNF mobile games) were affected by other games in the same period, and their turnover declined compared with December last year, they still firmly occupied the top row of the mobile game revenue list in January 2025. In addition, according to the statistics of game media Gamelook, during the spring of this year, the iOS revenue of China's mobile game market was among the top 10, and Tencent's mobile games accounted for seven seats and slaughtered the top five.

This is the first "Spring Festival file test" ushered in after Tencent proposed to give up the second dimension and fully return to the big DAU game. What we are curious about is why Tencent's games, especially "King", have such strong vitality, whether Tencent's next-generation big DAU game echelon has been built, and what information and direction are revealed in its new game reserve list?

"The King" has been ten years and can still be played

This Spring Festival, "Glory of Kings" is indeed "killing" crazy-

Monthly revenue in January 2025 nearly doubled month-on-month, hitting a new high in nearly 42 months.

And after the Spring Festival holiday, the turnover of "Glory of Kings" still ranks first in the data list, and there is more than one position in the second place - taking the second week of February as an example, according to statistics, "Glory of Kings" is estimated to have a turnover of 717 million, and the second place "Peace Elite" is 379 million, with a gap of almost double.

If you stretch the timeline, you will find that "Honor of Kings" will occupy the top of the iOS best-selling list for at least 216 days in 2024, which is a rare achievement as an evergreen game that has been online for ten years and has been sung every year "to the life cycle".

"The King" can be played, especially during the Spring Festival, when the turnover skyrockets, and from the perspective of external factors, it is naturally related to the Spring Festival holiday.

The Spring Festival can be said to be a must-compete period for manufacturers, except for a few special categories, such as the B game that is fully prepared for Valentine's Day, almost all types of games will launch a series of limited and preferential activities during the Spring Festival to stimulate player consumption. "The King" is no exception, launching limited skins, holiday events and exclusive offers during the Spring Festival of the Year of the Snake. In addition to the game, "Honor of Kings" is also linked with "Frozen", QQ Speed, Asian Games, etc., which also brings a lot of external exposure to the game, and even attracts newcomers to the pit.

The internal factor is related to the fact that the user plate of "The King" itself is big enough and has strong social attributes.

The Spring Festival is a family scene for visiting relatives and friends, breaking the ice with relatives who have not seen each other for many years, or going out to watch movies to pass the time, for many people, "The King" is the best solution. Even many veteran players have come back to the pit after many times, because this game has become a social tool to some extent.

Ms. Li, a "King" player who works in the bank, once retired from the pit for 4 months, and even uninstalled the game, but because the unit was going to organize a "Glory of Kings" friendly match, she returned to the game again due to the lack of manpower in the department.

Ms. Li said that last year she also wanted to abandon the game and uninstall, but the new 10v10 gameplay gave her the motivation to expand her hero pool and hone her skills.

It is worth noting that the Spring Festival of the Year of the Snake is not only the first Spring Festival after Tencent announced its return to big DAU games, but also the "first big test" after the major adjustment of TiMi Studio's structure.

At the beginning of this year, TiMi Studio underwent a major structural adjustment, and more than a dozen studios were integrated into four R&D sub-studios: J1, L1, J3, and T1, as well as Z1, which is responsible for innovation incubation, and G1, which is globalized. Among them, L1 Studio is responsible for the "Honor of Kings" IP series.

This restructuring has made the categories easier to focus, while the reporting hierarchy has been reduced, and the structure of the entire TiMi studio has become flatter, allowing studio producers to focus more on the product. Along with the restructuring adjustment, more than 40 grassroots cadres have been promoted, which is also seen as a signal for Tencent Games' internal refocus on the category.

Judging from the momentum of this year's "King", the structural adjustment has obviously brought a positive catalytic effect to the game. Just as the game media quoted people familiar with the matter as saying that "as long as the product is done well, there is still a lot of room for promotion", at the moment when the upward channel has peaked, relying on structural adjustment to stimulate the enthusiasm of employees, and finally feedback to the product quality.

Echelon construction has achieved initial results

As mentioned at the beginning, this Spring Festival harvest is not only "Glory of Kings", but the entire Tencent mobile game has ushered in its own spring.

In fact, the Spring Festival is the best time for this kind of big DAU game to exert its strength every year, but it is not difficult to find from this year's list ranking that the problem of "no successor to evergreen games" that has plagued Tencent Games for many years has been alleviated to a certain extent, and the echelon construction of Tencent Games has achieved initial results.

"Glory of Kings", "Peace Elite" and "Crossfire" are representatives of goose-based evergreen games, and the turnover of these three games also ushered in varying degrees of skyrocketing in January this year. This suggests that the gamers of these games are like silent users on the table, who are less enthusiastic about participating in social media discussions, but have more spending power and are moved by sentimental content.

For example, the first Chinese New Year film of "Peace Elite" "I Want to Go to You 2025" is a typical example. After the launch of this short film, the number of views on Douyin's single platform exceeded 100 million, and the number of topics on the whole network exceeded 400 million, indicating that it did attract the attention of "living players", and the Chinese New Year's Eve Peace Elite Official Weibo posted that 80 million "special forces" chose to log in to the game online for the New Year, which also shows that it is effective to use emotional grip to pry old players back.

The next-generation new game is another development path for goose-based mobile games.

In the past few years, Tencent Games has not been on this road smoothly, especially at the end of 2023, the open beta of "Yuan Dream Star", which has used almost all promotional resources to pave the way, but has failed to eat market share. This inevitably makes people doubt Tencent Games' ability to "create new stars". Fortunately, the 2024 open beta of "DNF Mobile Game" has made a comeback.

This game was almost an instant hit in open beta, and its performance once surpassed that of "Honor of Kings", even if the results dropped in the later stages, it still remained in the top three on the best-selling list most of the time.

"The Battle of the Golden Shovel" belongs to the representative of "bitter and sweet". When it launched in 2021, the results were not impressive, and the ceiling of auto chess was considered too low, so few people thought it would develop to such a point at the time. On the one hand, it benefits from the fact that there are few competitors, and it relies on Tencent's ecological advantages to radiate to more groups; On the other hand, the group of gambling enthusiasts was screened out, and their preferences were continuously optimized and content iteration was carried out to enhance the "uniqueness" of the game.

From the list, we also found an interesting phenomenon: Tencent Games realized that even if it is a big DAU game, there is still a user selection problem of "left and right fighting", so it has tried to subdivide and distinguish the content.

"Peace Elite" and "Crossfire" are clearly facing chicken lovers; and "Honor of Kings" belongs to the classic MOBA category; "The Battle of the Golden Shovel" is aimed at auto-chess and game enthusiasts, and because it has a relatively long game of battles, it attracts more students, which can be regarded as pulling down the average age of goose games; As for the standard end-to-end handover gameplay of "DNF Mobile Game", relying on the big IP effect to harvest the sentimental party.

It is worth noting that Tencent's big DAU games have strong social attributes, but they do not have obvious gender orientation, which just dodges the vigorous "men don't play" and "women don't play" movements on the market today, and players are not easily disturbed by the rhythm of gender issues on social platforms, which may also be another reason for the full harvest of goose mobile games.

Although it is said that Tencent does not have the genes to do two-dimensional, judging from the fact that "Naruto" can still rush into the top ten on the turnover list, this conclusion is not fair, or the summary is not comprehensive enough. Doing self-developed second games without IP support is Tencent's weakness, such as "Naruto", a big IP and the audience is a young mature age group, which can just give full play to the advantages of Tencent's entire ecosystem, such as relying on the circle of friends to do advertising, relying on e-sports events to boost the volume, etc.

In addition, the performance of "Love of Light and Night" is also surprising, it is the only one in the former Four Great Bs that has crossed the cycle and lived to the B 2.0 of the country. Although the decline in players' willingness to spend is inevitable, it is not easy to get 110 million turnover during the Spring Festival event.

Long-term operational capability and sense of crisis

On the whole, this Spring Festival Tencent mobile game has completely proved its long-term operation ability to the outside world, and also proved that the shift to large DAU games and the adjustment of the studio's structure have a positive impact on the product.

Last year, Tencent said at the Q3 earnings conference that it will continue to focus on maintaining and growing evergreen games in the future, while creating new games that have the potential to become evergreen games. This means more focus on a handful of games rather than doing a lot of new ones. At the same time, it is necessary to give each game a strong positioning, a very strong category and gameplay, and a high investment in manpower and production value.

But just as the birth of "Genshin Impact" caught Tencent Games off guard, the current market is no longer an era when the two products take turns to occupy the top five or even the top ten of the best-selling list, and last year alone, Paperfold's "Love and Deep Space" topped the best-selling list four times. In other words, a comprehensive bet on the evergreen game does not necessarily guarantee that the head position will be safe for a long time.

From Tencent's new product reserves, you can actually still feel a sense of crisis.

According to statistics, Tencent has disclosed about 34 products under development, among which "King of the World", "Valorant Mobile Game", "Monster World", etc. are undoubtedly worth paying attention to.

In addition, Tencent still has not completely abandoned the two-dimensional category. Last year, a trailer attracted widespread attention at station B, known as the "Godman Planning" strategy second game "Void Ring", the virtual anchors in reality were implanted into the game, and in the parallel universe called "Void Ring", they have to change the world by fighting.

Published by Tencent and developed by Beijing Pixel, "Silicon Universe" is a seemingly ordinary sandbox game, but it was revealed that it allows players to incarnate digital beings and load their consciousness into characters of different races, which makes people curious about the final effect.

It is not difficult to find that there are many new products in Tencent's future that do additive innovation according to the existing gameplay, as for whether this innovation stays in a gimmick, or will it really be recognized by the market, it still depends on the public beta results.

It is worth noting that, from the perspective of new product reserves, Tencent's "King" dependence is still serious, and the products based on the IP of "Glory of Kings" in the product reserves are not only open world, but also auto-chess and strategy, including the "Glory of Kings" variety show "Battle to the Peak 4" that combines game variety will also be recorded and broadcast this year.

This approach is very reminiscent of another manufacturer that eats repeatedly with a big IP, Xishanju. The vitality of "King" is indeed long, and even it is difficult for us to measure this game with the conventional "game life cycle", but there are too many precedents for the collapse of big IPs, and Tencent still has to build the next "King" as soon as possible, or even the "King" terminator, in order to ensure that it is not overtaken by other manufacturers.

According to the statistics of third-party data platforms (such as Sensor Tower and App Annie), except for "Peace Elite", most of the goose-based DAU mobile games do not account for a high proportion of overseas revenue, such as the most capable "Honor of Kings", which accounts for only 10%-15% of overseas revenue, and is dominated by Southeast Asian and East Asian markets with similar cultural backgrounds to China, and the response of the European and American markets is relatively cold.

Although the domestic market is big enough, users will always peak, and going overseas has become a must, and even if it is avoided as much as possible, Tencent's big DAU games still have a situation where they fight left and right and divert users from each other.

When it comes to going to sea, you might as well say a few more words, strategy games have always been a weapon for going to sea. According to AppGrowing data, strategy games account for 38.9% of the top 100 products in China's self-developed games in overseas markets in 2024. Tencent, on the other hand, is relatively weak in the operation and R&D of strategic products.

Looking at the market as a whole from the perspective of a single company, it will be difficult to ensure that Tencent can continue to grow in 2025. On almost all tracks, there are strong opponents who collide head-on with Tencent.

For example, on the two-dimensional track, NetEase, Perfect, and Shiyue respectively launched "Infinity", "Different Ring" and "Moon Looking", judging from the trailer, the gameplay is a little richer than "Void Ring"; In the shooting track, Tencent has "Rainbow Six" and "White Battle", and NetEase has "Outside the Bounds" and the upcoming "Overwatch" to fight.

This also reminds Tencent Games, which has returned to the top, to always be prepared for danger in times of peace. Ten years ago, Tencent Games brought out the evergreen tree of "Glory of Kings" through internal horse racing through structural adjustments, and in the new decade, Tencent Games has made a pretty good start with another structural adjustment, but is the Iron Throne of the new cycle still as stable as in the past?

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