Is Tencent miniStation taking the right path by not competing with Sony and Microsoft in the mobile games + e-sports field?

Earlier, due to the development of the domestic living room entertainment industry, consoles have been regarded by many companies as a weapon to break into the living room field. However, due to a series of factors such as incomplete investigation of market control and player preferences, as well as the stagnation of sales of consoles in China, this industry has increasingly become synonymous with failure in the eyes of the public.

Just when these manufacturers were about to give up this idea and re-plan, Tencent and Skyworth jointly created a miniStation with a large screen for playing mobile games, stepping into this rather grim time for the industry. On July 18, they officially held a press conference in Beijing to grandly launch this micro-host and the first Tencent miniStation Mobile Competition Conference.

Faced with an entire industry that is not optimistic about by many people, can Tencent's miniStation, which relies on mobile games and e-sports, bring about industry disruption?

The tangled market and Tencent’s “novelty”

With the opening of policies, consoles have become an important part of the domestic game industry. More than a decade of PC games have left living room entertainment blank. How to make domestic consoles develop rapidly has become a difficult problem facing many people.

Nowadays, the form of domestic consoles has gradually become clear, but its development models are nothing more than three types: the pure console development model based on PS4, the living room PC model based on Steam and PC, and the domestic Android console model.

But no matter which method is used, it cannot become mainstream in the domestic market environment. The selling price and number of games of traditional consoles, as well as the lackluster game content and poor operation of Android consoles have all become the reasons for their failure. Even the Tomahawk has been criticized by players for its obvious imitation of PS4 and Xbox.

Faced with such a tangled console industry, Tencent chose another approach. After combining research conducted by market research organization NewZoo on the domestic and international console game markets, it realized that only by grasping the domestic player group could it find a development path suitable for consoles.

Therefore, it decisively abandoned the other three methods, relied on its own mobile game advantages and the domestic game environment, and launched the slogan of "playing mobile games on the big screen". At the same time, it decisively added popular competitive elements to drive the development of the host by arousing the players' competitive enthusiasm.

Multiplayer on-screen competition becomes miniStation's killer feature

E-sports, as the hottest industry nowadays, has been loved by many game enthusiasts since the release of Tencent miniStation 1.0. Mobile e-sports and multi-player gaming on the same screen have been popular among many game enthusiasts. According to incomplete statistics, based on the behavioral monitoring results of 430 million cumulative installed base, 96 million+ mobile terminal embedding and 85 million+ active users, the proportion of mobile e-sports users aged 24 and below is as high as 76.5%, and the phenomenon of young age is very significant, among which males account for 80%.

Faced with the development trend of the domestic game industry, Tencent seized this opportunity to integrate competitive elements into the console. Based on the hardware and content of other consoles, miniStation is based on the choices brought by domestic family attributes, focuses on competition, and adds a multi-person screen function.

It is understood that the miniStation micro-game console hopes to enhance the interaction between players. It supports up to 8 players playing games on the same screen, has dual control modes of mobile phone and handle, and the delay is less than 16ms, which is suitable for family users to share. Compared with other consoles that compete in parameters and content, Tencent miniStation returns to the essence of living room entertainment.

Tian Gang, head of Tencent's Intelligent Device Innovation Center, said that miniStation is not compared with traditional host computers. This product is intended to occupy the living room, and playing with friends and family is what Tencent wants to emphasize more.

Can playing mobile games on a large screen become the mainstream for domestic consoles?

Although the word "competition" has long been emphasized by many manufacturers, most console games are still mainly stand-alone, which is incompatible with the domestic game development environment. This time, Tencent miniStation is indeed a different approach. With the slogan of playing mobile games on a large screen, it has put the porting methods that many Android consoles dare not talk about openly in front of everyone. Relying on its rich mobile game content and a large player base, it has cleverly avoided the limitations of traditional console development and provided some possibilities for change for the two major problems of game quality and player base.

At the same time, relying on the current hot competitive topics, the multiplayer same-screen game mode has once again opened up the audience range of TV games. Wang Wei, general manager of Skyworth Digital Retail Division, revealed that according to incomplete estimates, Skyworth's nearly 3,000 direct stores nationwide had about 150-200 registered people during the MMEC period. Such data does not include online registration, which is indeed worth considering. Before the end of the press conference, the number of online hardware reservations had exceeded 100,000, which also shows that players are curious about the way to play mobile games on the big screen. Both the content and the operation method are the most familiar aspects for players.

The miniStation jointly created by Tencent and Skyworth this time focuses on mobile games and competitions. By jointly developing offline competitions with Skyworth and using current popular games, Tencent hopes to fully demonstrate the advantages of miniStation in gaming experience. At the same time, it provides another direction for the development of domestic consoles with a player-centric approach.

However, whether this new approach can withstand the test of the domestic gaming environment remains to be seen.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.