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Nov. 19 (NBD) – A report on the evaluation of IP-based games in the digital entertainment industry released on Friday by National Business Daily and Gamma Data at the China International Digital Entertainment Industry Forum shows the output value of China's digital entertainment industry reached 548.4 billion yuan (79.2 billion U.S. dollars) in 2017, accounting for over 20 percent of that of China's digital economy.

A vital part of the cultural industry, digital entertainment (pan-entertainment) has efficiently promoted the industry's overall development. The value added of China's cultural industry and the industry's contribution to GDP constantly increased from 2012 to 2017. 

In the current digital entertainment industry, IP is the core element and digital entertainment-related IPs have made up 54 percent of the activated IPs in China's licensing market.

IP connects different digital entertainment sectors including games, animation, movies, and novels. Among these sectors, the game sector shows the fastest growth and boasts the highest monetization rate with its industrial scale surpassing 200 billion yuan (28.9 billion U.S. dollars).

The game segment greatly improves the value of IPs and drives the development of the whole digital entertainment industry by cooperating with other industries like animation and film production to satisfy the entertainment demand of users.  

According to the report, the fourth quarter of 2018 is estimated to see revenues generated by IP-based mobile games reach 24.49 billion yuan (3.5 billion U.S. dollars), taking up 70.1 percent of the total from mobile games. The proportion has kept at over 60 percent since 2016.

The IP of mobile games mainly comes from client games, animation, and novels.

Client games-based mobile games contributed 62.1 percent to the total revenues of China's top 100 mobile games of 2018. The market scale of the country's client games-based mobile games sector is expected to stand at 52.75 billion yuan (7.6 billion U.S. dollars) in 2018. 

The great popularity of client games-based mobile games is attributed to the big user base, mature products, and widely accepted themes.

Other kinds of mobile games are also on the rise. According to the report, the year of 2018 is expected to see the original mobile games market reach 6.74 billion yuan (973.4 million U.S. dollars), the animation-based mobile games market notch up 9.27 billion yuan (1.3 billion U.S. dollars) and the novel-based mobile games market total 6.31 billion yuan (911.3 million U.S. dollars).

Currently, mobile games developers are seeking IP sources from other sectors. The introduction of a wide variety of IPs will substantially expand the market size of the mobile game industry.

Moreover, the report also presents development prospects of the digital entertainment industry in different regions.

According to the report, the development of digital entertainment is strongly linked with the cultural and creative industry. Coastal areas in China, helped by a rich reserve of talents and large capital inflow, have gained a great momentum in the cultural and creative industry. Apart from coastal areas, Sichuan Province also enjoyed fast growth in the industry in recent years and is expected to be the cultural and creative center in western China, leading the overall development of the cultural and creative industry in the area.

 

Email: wenqiao@nbd.com.cn

Editor: Wen Qiao