NetEase released its financial results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2025. The report indicates that NetEase's Q4 revenue reached RMB 275 billion, with annual revenue totaling RMB 1.126 trillion. During the subsequent earnings conference call, the company's management provided in-depth responses to key market concerns, including the application of AI technology, overseas market expansion, long-term operation of evergreen games, and the progress of new product development, revealing the company's latest strategic direction amid technological transformation and global competition.
With the emergence of world model technologies like Genie3, the impact of AI on the gaming industry has become a major focus. When asked whether AI lowers the barrier to entry for game development, NetEase CEO Ding Lei stated that while AI does reduce the "entry threshold" for game production, it simultaneously raises the "success threshold" for top-tier products significantly. Although the proliferation of AI tools may lead to an explosion of creative content, for commercially successful blockbusters, the core barrier has shifted from pure "production capacity" to "integration capability"—specifically, how to seamlessly integrate AI technology with complex numerical systems, long-term economic structures, and deep social ecosystems. This requires substantial design expertise and operational experience, creating a moat that is difficult for new entrants without accumulated knowledge to cross.
Additionally, in response to analyst inquiries regarding NetEase's investment focus and competitive advantages in the AI sector, Ding Lei mentioned that the company does not blindly pursue general-purpose large models but is committed to developing "AI experts that best understand gaming," achieving efficient AI applications through comprehensive and deep integration. In vertical domains, high-quality private data is more critical than computing power, and application scenarios outweigh parameter scale. NetEase will continue to make intensive investments in vertical models, AI-native gameplay, and talent development, leveraging AI technology to further extend its leading edge in high-quality research and development and long-term operations.
It was reported that in 2025, NetEase comprehensively deepened its AI applications, with AI-native pipelines being deployed on a large scale across areas such as art, planning, programming, animation, and quality assurance, achieving efficiency improvements of up to 300% in certain segments and establishing an industry-leading AI industrialization barrier. Furthermore, as one of the earliest and most extensive pioneers in AI-native gameplay, NetEase has used AI as a core driver to pioneer and scale a series of AI-native features, including intelligent NPCs, AI-powered character customization, AI teammates, and director mode, which have been widely implemented in flagship products such as "Justice Mobile," "Where Winds Meet," "Naraka: Bladepoint Mobile," and "Eggy Party."