The emulator has important features such as experience optimization and scene extension, which is an important part of the development and upgrading of China’s mobile game market. In 2020, the number of users in China’s emulator market will reach 130 million, which means that the emulator market has become a relatively mature market with large scale, mature technology and excellent product experience, stable competition pattern, high penetration rate of heavy products and large user scale.
On the other hand, emulators have attracted a large number of core users in the mobile game market, and are still attracting new young users. As more and more Chinese mobile games seek to improve their business globally, the MAU in the overseas emulator industry have exceeded 100 million.
The market penetration of the emulator will continue to increase, affecting more people and developers, undertaking more user needs, and with the help of cloud technology, it is expected to eventually develop into a comprehensive entertainment platform. While serving more domestic users and developers, it will also become an important force to help the global dissemination of domestic cultural products. While it continues to develop, it will help more Chinese cultural and entertainment products influence global users and markets.
China’s Emulators Market Brief Overview
Take China’s emulators market for example. Amidst the backdrop of high growth in China’s mobile gaming market, the year-on-year growth rate picks up to 36.5% in 2020 while the penetration rate of about 19%. Looking back, the development of the game market is the primary factor influencing the development of the emulator market. As product upgrades and cloud gaming emerges, it is expected to enjoy high growth in the industry again.
Unlike products in 2015, the emulator market has come to fiercer competition. In addition to the BlueStacks, the top-ranked emulators are Chinese emulators, including Tencent’s Gameloop, NetEase’s MuMu, LD Player, and Nox Player. These emulators utilize their own unique advantages to consolidate the ranking in this sector. As to the category, sandbox, MMO, MOBA, and cards are the main categories with high user penetration.
As a whole, emulators have become an important channel to allow the market to be well-developed, and promising. Game players and publishers can pay more attention to the development trend in this sector in the following days.
Users, Penetration, and Nations
Emulator has become an important channel market. The emulator market is fully developed, mature and has broad prospects. For players and publishers, the emulator market at this stage is in a very noteworthy stage. emulator users have rich gaming experience, high stickiness, active level, strong initiative and strong willingness to pay. In terms of game experience, 69.4% of users have more than 4 years of game experience, only 10.3% of users only play mobile games, and more than 60% of users have experience in end game and host game. In addition, users who have used the emulator to play mobile games for 1-2 years account for 46.3% of the total, and users who have used the emulator for more than 2 years account for 36.5% of the total. It shows that most of the emulator users are players with relatively rich experience in mobile games and emulator games. At the same time, 17.2% of users have less than one year, that is, more and more new players have started to use emulators, which shows that although the emulator market has developed more maturely, there is greater room for growth.
35.7% of users use the emulator every day, and 29% of users use the emulator 3-5 days a week; Among these users, 56% of them use the emulator for more than 3 hours a day, which indicates that the core users’ emulator usage habits are more thorough. emulator users are generally paid users, and they are characterized by high net worth. In the group of non paid users, they also have a high willingness to pay. According to the survey data, among the overall emulator users, the proportion of paying users is as high as 61.9%, and nearly half of the users pay more than 200 yuan annually. At the same time, 65.6% of non paying users said that they would or might pay on the emulator in the future.
India, Brazil and the United States accounted for top 3 of the traffic, followed by Vietnam, Indonesia, Russia, Thailand, South Korea, the Philippines and Türkiye. Although India’s penetration rate of PC Internet users is less than 10%, it still accounts for the largest share of traffic, which is due to both the population and the industry. Due to the lack of advanced mobile phone hardware, the emulator is one of the most convenient ways for Indian Internet users to access the latest high-quality mobile games. For the same reason, Southeast Asia also has a large share.
Emulator is an important participant in the upgrading and globalization of China’s game industry. It has development opportunities in the market, overseas, products, scenes and the future, but also faces various challenges. Only by focusing on the needs of users and developers, constantly optimizing products, exploring broader market development space and more diversified content services, can emulators continuously give play to their unique product characteristics, and promote the development and upgrading of games and even the entertainment industry.
