Last month, we presented a Chinese only conference that allowed developers to learn from companies such as Adjust, Apus, and Huawei about improving their opportunities outside China. We chose one of those talks from the event we thought would interest our western developers as well. We hope you enjoy this summary of "APUS: In-depth Analysis of Overseas Game Market" by Cheng Si, the Head of APUS Overseas Distribution & Growth.

In my talk, I want to share a bit about our research in the first part of the year and how it has affected different places in the mobile market, including Europe, America, and Asia.

The status of the overseas game market

European and American markets

In the top 10 of the US free mobile game rankings in the first quarter of 2020, hypercasual games accounted for 80% of the list, and large companies released most of them. Therefore, developers need to consider whether they have enough creativity and sustained rapid output in the process of making hypercasual games. Some developers of hypercasual games that APUS has contacted told us they produce one or two demos a week and put them on the market. Through promotion, they can quickly verify the gameplay and the degree of absorption. If both are acceptable, the game will be developed into a more advanced game. Due to the impact of this year's epidemic, it has become more and more difficult for games to monetize through advertising.

Starting from the end of 2019, manufacturers of hypercasual games gradually began to focus on retention and creating more IPs. In the best-selling list, the top 10 has matching games, and the multiplayer games occupy the majority. However, these games have a relatively long operating time, and few new products make the list.

APUS's advice to developers is that if you want to make a match-3 matching game, you must add your own unique ideas to the match-3 gameplay to avoid homogenization.

Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan markets

For the Southeast Asian market, there was an explosion of many IO games that appeared in Thailand's free list in the first quarter of 2020. APUS's suggests to developers that if developers have this kind of casual sports game with a relatively high degree of completion, they can put in the Thai market to verify them. In this best-selling list, large-scale competitive games and MMO games still occupy a dominant position.

For Hong Kong and Taiwan markets, Chinese games from mainland China that are introduced to Taiwan, localization will be straightforward. But according to the market, it will be a red sea, and users will be more discerning. We can see that creative and big IP games dominate the free list. In contrast, the best-selling list is full of Card-Based RPG and MMO games.

Japan and South Korea markets: Japan is also affected by the epidemic, and users are staying at home, so casual games were a breakout in the first quarter. The best-selling list in the Japanese market is mainly occupied by some long-period games, such as "Monster Strike," "Puzzle & Dragons," "FGO," and so on.

Overseas game distribution steps and different distribution methods

Foreign game distribution is generally divided into the following five steps: preparation stage (1 ~ 1.5 months), warm-up period & test period (1 month), user acquisition period (first month), stable duration & expansion period (2 ~ 6 Months), and finally the stable duration (6 months).

Differences in the distribution methods of overseas regions

Online user acquisition is the mainstay in Europe and America, and primary traffic is concentrated on places like Facebook. Second, the community promotion effect is relatively significant. To publish games in Europe and the United States, you need to make good use of community operations, including Fan pages, Reddit, Facebook Groups, or Discord.

Five major countries in Southeast Asia: Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines. The distribution in Southeast Asia is mainly based on user acquisition + influencer effect, and it must support various third-party payments and multiple language versions.

Online and offline integrated marketing is mainly used in the Hong Kong and Taiwan markets. You must pay attention to the creation of soft resources, such as Wikis and walkthroughs, as well as related products. Using works with strong topics such as doujin, comics, and novels to promote is also very effective. Hong Kong and Taiwan, like Southeast Asia, also need to support local third-party payments.

In Japan and South Korea, games in the Japanese market usually acquire core users through reservations. Also, Japan and South Korea pay more attention to local channels and pay attention to operating activities that are suitable for the local market.

If you are interested in bringing localized operation and promotion, Integrated content marketing, and continuous user introduction & long-term operation activities for your game,  in these countries, contact us at Apus to learn more.