On January 18, Microsoft announced its acquisition of Activision Blizzard at a price of $95 per share, with a total value of $68.7 billion in all cash transactions. Due to the concept of games and meta universe, the A-share game sector rose sharply yesterday, Sichuan Xun You Network Technology Co.Ltd(300467) , Rastar Group(300043) contributed to the “20cm” limit, Hubei Century Network Technology Inc(300494) , Shenzhen Bingchuan Network Co.Ltd(300533) rose by more than 10%.
Microsoft’s heavy purchase of video Blizzard mainly focuses on its intellectual property rights in traditional game production, because Microsoft has a phenomenal Xbox game console, and the cooperation of hardware + content can produce more imagination. In fiscal year 2021, Microsoft’s net profit was US $61.271 billion, which means that this acquisition cost more than Microsoft’s net profit in the whole fiscal year. Microsoft said that games are the most dynamic and exciting entertainment category among all platforms today, and will play a key role in the development of yuanuniverse platform.
However, frankly speaking, if the “declining hero” of video blizzard in the game field does not catch up with the popularity of the concept of meta universe, the author does not think its prospect is worth looking forward to. Although Blizzard is the head company in the global game field in the PC era and has successively released best-selling games such as Warcraft, StarCraft and storm hero, there are few rare products in the mobile Internet era. The author believes that the stimulation of Microsoft’s acquisition of Blizzard to China’s game sector will be very short, and we should not be too optimistic about the development prospect of the whole industry.
Why is the game sector not worth watching? The tightening of industrial policies is the biggest reason. In recent years, the state has successively issued a number of policy documents regulating the development of the game industry. In particular, last year, it issued a series of notices on the “anti addiction” of juvenile games, and made it clear that it does not encourage “krypton gold”. Relevant data show that 755 game editions were approved in 2021, a year-on-year decrease of 46.2%. Since July last year, the release of version number has been suspended. Under this policy guidance, it is difficult for Chinese game enterprises to make a big breakthrough in revenue.
In addition, from the perspective of market scale and number of users, the current game industry is also stepping into the stock market from the incremental market. According to the report on China’s game industry in 2021, the actual sales revenue of China’s game market in 2021 was 296.513 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.4%; The number of game users in China was 666 million, a year-on-year increase of 0.22%. Although these two data are still growing, they have shown an obvious “cooling” trend compared with the popularity in previous years.
The core reason why the market is flocking to the game sector is the concept of meta universe. Microsoft spent a lot of money on the acquisition of activism blizzard. Although one of its core motives is to seize the layout opportunity of the meta universe industry with Facebook, in such strategic layout and M & a opportunity, it doesn’t matter how much spark the game can strike with the meta universe. The important thing is that it can’t fall into the camp of competitors as a merger target. This logic is very similar to several major Internet platforms in China competing for traffic entrance in the fields of bicycle sharing and takeout a few years ago.
In China, the current game concept stocks in the A-share market are basically pure game companies, which are not only unable to compete with the layout of the large platform, but also unable to support any application of the meta universe. Such a concept of meta universe is undoubtedly very ethereal.
