Top 100 best-selling games in April: Top 10 undergoes a drastic change, with SLG’s ace “Endless Winter” landing at No. 2 | Game Look | GameLook.com.cn

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GameLook report/Mini games can be said to be the hottest field in the domestic game industry this year. In addition to the unparalleled growth rate, the high frequency of list changes and the pace of new game launches with frequent hits have all made small games more popular. Attention is growing. Even in early April, GameLook discovered that the app games and mini-game markets had an inverted effect: four mini-games had entered the “quasi-billion-level monthly revenue” product category, but there were zero new App games with monthly revenue exceeding 100 million. .

Since Gamelook released the best-selling list of WeChat mini-games every month for more than half a year, it has become normal for the middle and lower parts of the best-selling list to be updated with more than 30 new games every month. However,In April, the WeChat mini-game best-selling list had the most changes and the most dramatic changes were in the Top 10. As of April 24, the top 10 had the most changes.Compared with the same period last month, there were 6 games in the top 10. Except for many games that were new games released around April, others entered the top ten through continuous operation from the middle of the list.

Among them, the most representative new game in April is “Endless Winter Whiteout Survival” released by Diandian, which has a monthly revenue of over 600 million in overseas markets and currently ranks second in the global SLG category. Its Chinese version is directly available in WeChat mini-games and airborne. No. 2 on the best-selling list, the top SLG game is released in the form of a mini-game, which is particularly iconic.

Overall, the top 100 best-selling games in April still maintained a relatively high turnover rate, but the number of new games entering the list dropped from 30 per month to 23 this month.

With 8 products on the list, Sanqi Interactive Entertainment has firmly ranked as the leading manufacturer of WeChat mini games, and it still occupies 3 positions in the top ten. The remaining ones with more entries on the TOP100 list are: Crazy Games (4 models), Hometown Interactive (4 models), Kaiying Network (3 models), Yishijie (3 models), and Damenglongtu (3 models).

The market is upside down: small games are frequently popular, and mobile app games perform poorly.

There are a total of 100 products on the list in April, of which 21 have increased in ranking, 53 have decreased in ranking, 23 new games have entered the list, and 3 have had no change in ranking.

Compared with March, the number of games that have dropped in ranking this month has increased significantly, from 32 to 53, while the number of games that have risen in ranking has decreased from 32 to 21. The number of new products entering the list has also significantly decreased, but the top ten The large change in name means that small game manufacturers are targeting and devoting more resources to the top product position.

Among the top ten best-selling mini-games on WeChat on April 24, 6 positions have changed. They are “Endless Winter”, “Fire at Zombies”, “Hundred Refined Heroes”, “Fingertips Unparalleled”, “Sword Master” and “Wandering Supermarket”. According to industry experience, if the rankings are stable, many of these six small games have the opportunity to enter the “quasi-billion-level monthly revenue” product series.

The drastic changes in the top rankings mean that publishers’ resources are beginning to be concentrated on top games, and better performance of individual products will help publishers acquire more potential new game agents and invest in R&D teams, while A high ranking not only attracts media reports and the attention of industry professionals, but also helps companies expand, recruit, and even raise capital.

Six games in the TOP10 were either airborne or rapidly improved in rankings. This was something no one expected. This not only shows that the traffic pool of the small game market is large enough to accommodate the parallel release of multiple popular products at the same time, but also shows that the accuracy of the popularity of small games is astonishingly high and the traffic distribution efficiency is extremely high. This is something that has never been seen in the APP game market.

But correspondingly, 6 games collectively entered the TOP10, which also put great pressure on the sub-new games and old games on the mini-game list. It can be seen that the user ecology of leading mini-games is easily affected by the release of new games. This reflects The user group structure of the Krypton Gold mini-game itself is not stable, user loyalty is not high, and the game brand effect and differentiation are insufficient.

The explosive growth of mini-games highlights the loneliness of the App game market during the same period. Gamelook previously calculated the performance of domestic new games in March and found that there were only two new games with revenue exceeding 30 million yuan. Last month, no new game APP had a monthly revenue of more than 100 million yuan.

For colleagues who only make app games, this has to be said to be another critical blow. We have always been pursuing making mobile games high-end. Being crushed by big games in the App market is frustrating enough. Now the rapid rise of small games has surprised many people.

But the development of the market never depends on personal will. Thanks to faster conversion links, stronger volume acquisition capabilities and the resulting user coverage capabilities, small games are bound to become more popular in the Chinese market in the future. This is also supported by industry data.

The “2024 Mobile Game Industry Insight Report” recently released by QuestMobile shows that,The mini-game market is growing rapidly. The active users of WeChat mini-games have reached 750 million, a year-on-year increase of more than 20%, which is higher than App mobile games. The competitive relationship between the two is gradually emerging: the number of overlapping users of mini-games and App games has increased by 110 million compared with last year; 70% of App mobile game users are using WeChat mini games. In the future, as more development teams join the mini-game track, or APP games release mini-game versions, the supply of new games in the APP game market is being exhausted.

Major players dominate the list, with two small games having over 100 million monthly active users

Judging from the trends in recent months, the big buyers have increasingly stronger control over the market. Sanqi Interactive Entertainment has been the manufacturer with the largest number of games on the Top 100 list for many consecutive months. In April, they included “Xundao Daqian”, “Sword Master”, “The Nameless One”, “Soul Prologue”, Eight games including “Hegemony”, “Call Me the Shopkeeper”, “Three Kingdoms War” and “Douluo Dalu: The Awakening of the Spirit” were included in the list.

Followed by crazy games (Haoteng Jiake), there are 4 games on the list: “King of Salted Fish”, “Crazy Knights”, “Fat Goose Gym” and “Dao Tian Lu”. The chess and card game giant Hometown Interactive also has 4 chess and card games on the list. In addition, Kaiying Network’s “Monsters Together”, “Legend of Sword and Fairy: A New Beginning” and “Five Thousand Years of Heroes” all entered the Top 20.

Dameng Longtu also has three games on the list, namely “Fire at the Zombies”, “Calabash Battle” and “The King’s Intention”; Yishijie relies on “This City Has Fertile Land”, “I am the Big Boss” and Three games of “Business City” were included in the list.

It is worth noting that the head game has achieved a new milestone record. After “King of Salted Fish” and “Crazy Knights” hit 80 million active users last year,A QuestMobile report shows that in February 2024, Sanqi Interactive Entertainment’s “Xundao Daqian” had a MAU of 160 million, and Hao Teng Creative’s “The King of Salted Fish” had a MAU of 117 million!

According to QM report data, the number of WeChat mini program game users has reached 750 million, which means that “Xundao Daqian” accounts for more than 21% of WeChat mini game users. What is surprising is that so many leading products can still get along with each other with such a high number of users. There is a high probability that a player will play multiple mini-game products at the same time. This is difficult to do for heavy-duty App games. Arrived. Of course, in terms of user payment, the ARPU of small games is still significantly lower than that of serious app games.

“Endless Winter” lands second on the best-selling list, mini-games become a new frontier for SLG mobile games

The best-selling list in April confirmed Gamelook’s previous speculation. The performance of 4X SLG games on small game platforms is getting stronger and stronger. The most noteworthy among them is “Endless Winter” published by Diandian Interactive. It ranked No. 1 on the best-selling list soon after its release. Second, the daily income has reached millions. In addition, the remaining three SLGs: “Pocket Shock”, “Hegemony” and “Three Kingdoms” all remain within the Top 50.

The global monthly revenue of the overseas version of “Endless Winter”, “Whiteout Survival”, has exceeded 600 million yuan. Perhaps no one expected that its preferred distribution platform after entering the domestic market would be WeChat mini-games.

Gamelook believes that this may represent the beginning of a shift in the 4X SLG game position. In addition to Apps for new SLG products in the domestic market in the future, mini-games will also become an inevitable option. The most fertile growth ground for SLG games in the future will be on the mini-game platform. .

Different from traditional SLG mobile games, “Endless Winter” chooses a vertical design. The low-polygon art style and casual creative advertising materials are designed for general users. In fact, SLG’s new hot hits, including “Last War” released by Yuanqu, are well aware of this and have blocked the C-position of user acquisition. The success of these hot hits overseas has also verified the design for general users. It is very helpful for traffic acquisition, and it is popular domestically and overseas.

For SLG games, small games for general users may be one of the best new fronts for new game acquisitions. The game experience and advertising creativity for general users can help reduce traffic costs and solve the problems caused by the stock stage of the App mobile game market. Challenges include high purchase volume and inaccurate user positioning. Therefore, it is not surprising that SLG enters the small game platform, and it is even an inevitable result.