Last year, Facebook and Amazon entered the cloud game market following Google and Microsoft.With the evolution of communication technology and the increase in gameplay population, more and more companies are entering cloud games.Netflix, which provides video distribution services, may enter the game market around 2022, and will need to pay attention to the trends in the future.
Each company is trying to enhance the service, but Microsoft is differentiating from other services by providing original titles for their own studio.Similarly, Google, who was creating original titles in Stadia's game studio, has changed the strategy of closing its own game production studio in Los Angeles and Montreal in February 2021 and developing original games.
The cloud game market is expected to expand, but has not yet become a big market.In this paper, we will explain the movements of the entire game market and the business that Google, Microsoft, etc. will use cloud games, and will consider future movements in the cloud game market, which will be newly entered.
2020 game market
The expansion of nesting consumption due to the influence of the new colon virus has a significant impact on the game content market.It was definitely Nintendo that dominated the 2020 game market, and the "Atsumare Animal Crossing" released by Nintendo in March 2020 has been exploding from the beginning, and the annual sales are 9 million.It is estimated to exceed the book.As a result, the sales volume of Switch has increased.
In November 2020, "PlayStation 5" and "Xbox Series X/S", which are new models of PlayStation and Xbox, were released, but due to lack of equipment, it was not possible to sell enough units.It is still out of stock.
According to the Famitsu Game White Paper 2021 of Kadokawa ASCII Research Institute Co., Ltd., the global game content market in 2020 is estimated to be about 131.6%year -on -year, 20,6417 billion yen (Fig. 1).Especially in Asia and North America, the growth rate has surpassed the home game market in North America.
Fig. 1 Fig. 1 (Source: Kadokawa ASCII Research Institute "Famitsu Game White Paper 2021" (July 2021))
Similarly, the domestic game market is growing, exceeding 2 trillion yen in 2020.Among them, the online platform market is 1,316.4 billion yen, accounting for most domestic game markets.In addition, the size of the domestic cloud game market in 2020 is estimated to be ¥ 153 billion, and has increased slightly (Figure 2).It is estimated that it will exceed 13.7 billion yen in 2024, but it is expected that the startup of the full -fledged cloud game market will still take some time.
FIG. 2] Domestic cloud game market size changes (Source: Kadokawa ASCII Research Institute "Famitsu Game White Paper 2021" (July 2021))
Indie game breakthrough
One of the most notable movements in the game market in recent years is the breakthrough of indie games. It is new to remember that "Fall Guys" and "AMONG US" released in 2020 have broken. It is said that the evolution of game engines, the commonization of libraries, the opening of the game store, and the evolution of the payment process are supposed to support this. In the past, some funds were required for content promotion, but the rise of recent video distribution services has made promotion relatively easy and inexpensive. The recent promotion method is to have a popular streamer play the game ahead of the game and distribute it live. Some popular streakers have more than 10 million channel registrants, so they can be more effective than hitting TV ads depending on the situation. In future game promotions, it is likely that it will be important to collect popular streamer and choose a streamer that suits the advertising game. Also, the spread of cloud games may lead to further breakthroughs of indie games in that the number of sales channels in games is increased.
Development of portable gaming PC "Steam Deck"
Until now, games have been played on consoles and PCs, but as you can see in the above -mentioned "AMONG US", more and more games have been played on mobile devices that can be carried.
Valve, which runs a major digital game store Steam, announced in July 2021 that it has developed a portable gaming PC "Steam Deck". As a result, users can easily play PC games regardless of location. In December 2021, in Europe and the United States (US, Canada, EU, the UK), it will be launched in 2022 in other areas. The price is $ 399 for a 64GB model (EMMC), $ 529 for the 256GB model (NVME SSD), and $ 649 for the 512GB model (NVME SSD). The OS uses Linux -based OS "SteamOS", which already supports Linux games for Steamos on Steam, and Windows games through the emulator developed by Valve. I plan to respond. By synchronizing with the user's own Steam account, you can play games owned on Steam on PC on Steam Deck.
STEAM DECK can also use cloud game services.Phil Spencer, Officer of Microsoft's Xbox business, has announced that Microsoft's cloud game services work comfortably on Steam Deck, and it is unknown which web browser or app is used, but eventually.Depending on the method, the Microsoft cloud game service will also work on Steam Deck.
FIG. 3] Steam Deck (Source: Steam)
As symbolized by Steam Deck, the flow of playing high -quality games on PCs and consoles on mobile terminals is accelerating, and in the future, console and platform providers will win competition.It will be necessary to incorporate users who play mobile games on smartphones into mobile terminals and cloud game services such as Steam Deck.
Regulation of cloud game apps in the App Store, which is the barrier to the spread of cloud games
In 2020, there was an event that hindered the development of the cloud game market.Apple has regulated the distribution of a cloud game app on the App Store.In September 2020, Apple revised the App Store Review guidelines and added the "Streaming Games" item.This is a regulation for the STADIA, GeForce Now, and Microsoft's cloud game services, which had started services at the time.Apple has stated that the App Store will provide a cloud game app as long as all guidelines described in Streaming Games.
There are two points on the guidelines above.The first point is that all the cloud games provided are submitted to the App Store as an individual app, and updates and other information must be submitted individually.In addition, each cloud game application must prepare an individual App Store product page so that search, ranking, review and evaluation are eligible.The second point is that even if you provide many cloud games on one app as a catalog app, you need to prepare an individual game app page as described above and link it from the catalog page to each app.In addition, the payment of subscription costs must be provided with an option to "sign in with Apple" and "use in -app" options.
One of the strengths is that it is one of the strengths to launch the target game immediately on one catalog app, as if watching dramas and movies in Netflix, but the App Store restrictions, the cloud on the App Store.The provision of a game app has been restricted.To avoid these guidelines, cloud game platformers such as Microsoft, Google and NVIDIA have given up on iOS apps on the App Store and provide cloud game services through web browsers.
In this way, the environment surrounding the cloud game market has continued to fluctuate due to various movements in the game market.After that, we will explain the trends of each cloud game service 2020 and 21 years.
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