With an annual profit of over 900 million, Jiuyou launched the platform 2.0 strategy

On March 16, 9game's 2015 annual strategy conference and "Golden September Award" ceremony were held at the Beijing National Convention Center. At the conference, UC Vice President Lin Yongsong announced that UC Games' revenue share with partners in 2014 exceeded RMB 900 million, and it continued to maintain its position as the largest Android online game joint operation platform in China. At the same time, 9game will take the lead in advancing to platform 2.0 in 2015, open up platform capabilities, and gradually "modularize" operation resources and platform services such as evaluation data, marketing preheating, operation activities, and user services, so that developers can apply for and use them freely, and change the cooperation between developers and the platform from passive to active.

In 2014, the developer share exceeded 900 million

As one of the largest Android game distribution platforms in China, Jiuyou is known for its concentration of heavy game users and high ARPU value compared with 360, Baidu and other channels. At the press conference, Lin Yongsong announced that the UC game business will share more than 900 million yuan with partners in 2014. In 2012 and 2013, Jiuyou announced the figures of 100 million and 300 million yuan respectively, which means that the revenue of UC game business has maintained an average annual growth of more than 2 times.

Statistics show that in 2014, 9game’s revenue contribution to many mobile games such as “Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils 3D”, “Miracle of All People” and “Gunfight of All People” ranked first in all channels. On the first test day of “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”, 9game’s revenue exceeded 60% of the whole game.

According to the reporter, in addition to UC Browser, a super app with over 100 million daily active users, Jiuyou also has in-depth media and community operation capabilities. For example, the most active mobile game community in China, Jiuyou Forum, brings together a large number of professional mobile game players and huge guild organizations. They not only effectively improve the overall activity of Jiuyou players, but also provide developers with a lot of help in game testing and preheating. This is also an important reason why Jiuyou can always be in the leading group in the domestic mobile game platform landscape with many strong competitors.

Open platform capabilities and enter platform 2.0

"In 2015, the market size of the domestic mobile game industry is expected to exceed 40 billion." Lin Yongsong pointed out that the domestic mobile game industry has gradually matured. In 2015, the industry has three important trends. First, game content is becoming more and more diversified, and there are still many opportunities in many segments; second, it is becoming increasingly difficult to acquire users, and marketing preheating and fan economy will become more and more important; third, the use of channels requires more and more refined operations, and different operation strategies need to be matched to users of different platforms, and even different types of users on the same platform.

"To describe the current market situation in one sentence, it is 'more opportunities, higher barriers'." Lin Yongsong proposed that mobile game channels should also actively respond to industry changes and transform to mobile game platform 2.0, the core of which is open capabilities. In his opinion, in the past, CP (game content provider) and platform interaction were mostly passive, usually the platform would give CP operational requirements, such as when to preheat and what user activities to do, and CP was responsible for coordinating the implementation.

Open Platform 2.0 is to let CPs move from passive cooperation to active participation. Jiuyou will modularize operational resources and platform services such as evaluation data, marketing preheating, operational activities, and user services, allowing game developers to apply for and use them freely. "We hope that in the future CPs can decide their own products and operational rhythms through the Jiuyou open platform, and use the various resources or service modules provided by Jiuyou to achieve them independently." Lin Yongsong pointed out that while giving CPs greater operational flexibility, Jiuyou will focus more on expanding platform resources and improving platform operational capabilities.

Supernova Program upgraded, Alibaba Cloud launches 100 million yuan support plan

In mid-2014, 9game announced the launch of the "Supernova Plan", which included a number of support policies including new game testing, dynamic ratings, and new game expectation lists, aiming to provide better services and assistance to developers, thereby discovering and creating more star mobile game products. In 2015, 9game upgraded its own brand developer support plan.

First, Jiuyou announced that it will launch a special "100 million yuan support plan" for game developers in conjunction with Alibaba Cloud, providing developers with cloud service resources and related service support worth 100 million yuan. The support fund amount starts from 6,000 yuan and can reach 1 million yuan at the highest, which can be used to purchase any Alibaba Cloud product. Chen Jinpei, general manager of Alibaba Cloud Business, said: "In order to ensure the successful operation of cloud game customers' business, Alibaba Cloud has established a dedicated game industry team to provide a complete set of solutions from dedicated pre-sales consultation, technical testing, online escort, 60-second service response during operation, and big data services." Industry insiders pointed out that this move will effectively help game manufacturers, especially small and medium-sized developers, reduce hardware investment costs, allowing them to focus on product research and development and innovation, and Alibaba Cloud's exclusive resources will also become an important weight for Jiuyou to compete with Baidu and 360 for game developers.

As an important measure for the platform's 2.0 transformation, Jiuyou has upgraded its service for free new game testing. CP (game content provider) can submit testing requirements in the developer's backend and complete self-service testing services.

For individual studios, 9game will also use its platform advantages to help them solve the problems of company qualification application, version number supporting services, etc., to solve the urgent needs of small and medium-sized teams in this regard. In addition, with the help of Alibaba Group's new traffic, 9game will provide more traffic resources for stand-alone games in 2015 than ever before.

At the same time, Jiuyou also officially released its first smart hardware product, the Xiaoqi controller, at the conference. The original intention of the Xiaoqi controller was to meet the high operating requirements of heavy game users and to catalyze competitive games to open up the user market. Previously, the Xiaoqi controller had launched two rush purchase activities on the official website, and both were sold out in a long time. At the meeting, the Xiaoqi controller also officially announced that it would recruit partners. The Xiaoqi controller will provide SDK for partners, free of custom development, 100% adaptation, and open priority purchase rights to cooperative game users.

Integrate Alibaba's mobile game business and upgrade resources

In November 2014, Ali Games officially announced that it would hand over its mobile game business to 9game under Alibaba Mobile Business Group. On the day of the press conference, 9game announced that the integration of Ali's mobile game business had been initially completed and all resources had been upgraded. In addition to the original resources such as UC Browser, 9game.com, 9game App, and 9game Community, in terms of game distribution, 9game will also receive support from multiple mobile portals with over 100 million users, such as Taobao, Alipay, and Shenma Search.

According to the reporter, Jiuyou has currently logged into Taobao Mobile and Alipay Wallet, similar to the promotion entrance of JD.com and Dianping on WeChat. Industry insiders pointed out that the introduction of users from Taobao Mobile and Alipay will enable Jiuyou to better expand the user base of light online games, diversify the user source, and provide a more comprehensive mobile game user platform for game developers. In addition to direct traffic support, the game-related resources of Alibaba Group are also in Jiuyou's integration vision, such as the exclusive support of Alibaba Cloud services launched this time. In a sense, Jiuyou's "Alibaba effect" has just begun.