According to a research report from Orient Securities, significant regulatory changes are expected in 2025. The pilot program for local processing of game license applications is directly accelerating product modifications and approvals, leading to a month-over-month increase in the issuance speed of new licenses. As AI applications in the gaming industry gradually shift from B2B to B2C, the firm anticipates that in the B2B sector, leading evergreen games will continue to achieve production capacity and traffic growth with AI support. In the B2C sector, an increasing number of high-DAU games are utilizing natural language AI game engines to drive user co-creation, which is expected to result in substantial growth for both game content and daily active users. Furthermore, the firm recommends focusing on developers with significant project reserves this year.

Orient Securities' main views are as follows: AI and policy drivers are fueling a continuous increase in game content supply. In 2025, China's game revenue is projected to grow by 8% year-over-year, significantly outperforming the 3.7% growth in total retail sales. For existing games, AI is driving sustained increases in DAU and revenue for evergreen titles. Regarding new games, the Chinese game market is unique, with policy primarily governing the supply side. The number of licenses issued directly influences industry growth speed and corporate confidence in project initiation. Major regulatory changes are anticipated in 2025, and the pilot local processing of licenses is directly speeding up product revisions and approvals, with license issuance accelerating monthly.

AI game editors are beginning to deliver growth, with a long-term positive outlook on platform-based companies. For instance, the AI game editor represented by Tencent's "Peacekeeper Elite: Oasis Genesis" has surpassed 33 million DAU, indicating that game AI engines are progressively transitioning from B2B empowerment to B2C empowerment. Leading Chinese game companies like Tencent and NetEase are gradually upgrading their AI tools and integrating them into high-DAU games. AI's empowerment of natural language and drag-and-drop game development enables a large number of end-users to participate in game production, leading to a significant increase in user-generated content. However, the firm believes UGC is not the final goal but an intermediate stage for accumulating platform language data and traffic. It is also the most critical link before the future phase of de-manualization in the gaming industry. Companies with large-DAU platforms, especially those capable of integrating with self-developed AI engines, are seen as likely to secure a ticket to future AIGC gaming platforms.

In 2026, price wars for new games are expected to restart, with low-ARPU evergreen games being less affected. Against the backdrop of rapid overall industry growth, different game genres continue to show divergence. Low-ARPU products, such as competitive and puzzle games, demonstrate stronger resistance to economic pressures, showing growth in traffic and user spending. In contrast, high-ARPU genres like RPGs face macroeconomic challenges. The revival of PC games continues to deepen, with the proportion of cross-platform leading products steadily increasing. As development budgets for Chinese mobile games grow annually, investments in some major projects have already surpassed those of traditional AAA console titles. Consequently, the share of multi-platform products is expected to keep rising, with some projects even prioritizing PC development from the outset.