As players know, emulators are an integral part of the development of the mobile game market. In 2020, China will have 130 million emulator users, which indicates that the emulator market has become a relatively mature market with large scale, mature technology and excellent product experience. At the same time, the time spent playing mobile games around the world has also provided a strong impetus for the sustained growth of the industry.

On the other hand, the products in the emulator have obvious heavy characteristics, and the experience, duration, and payment habits of the emulator users also show that the emulator has attracted a large number of core users in the mobile game market, and is still attracting new young users.

With the continuous penetration of emulators in the game market, more and more players begin to use emulators to play games, which has also had a profound impact on game developers. Through the enabling of cloud technology, a comprehensive cultural and entertainment platform will be built in the near future. It can better help cultural products spread around the world.

China’s Emulators Market Brief Overview

Take China’s emulator market as an example. In the context of the rapid growth of China’s mobile game market, the year-on-year growth rate in 2020 will reach 36.5%, while the penetration rate will be about 19%. In retrospect, the development of the game market is the main factor affecting the development of the emulator market. As product upgrades and cloud gaming emerges, it is expected to enjoy high growth in the industry again.

Dissimilar to items in 2015, the emulator market has come to fiercer contest. Notwithstanding the BlueStacks, the highest level emulators are Chinese emulators, including Tencent’s Gameloop, NetEase’s MuMu, LD Player, and Nox Player. These emulators use their own one of a kind benefits to combine the positioning in this area. Concerning the classification, sandbox, MMO, MOBA, and cards are the primary classifications with high client infiltration.

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.

Users, Penetration, and Nations

Emulator users have rich game experience, strong initiative and willingness to pay for games. For example, 69.4% of users have more than 4 years of gaming experience. However, only 10.3% of users only play mobile games, but more than 60% of users have game console experience. In addition, 46.3% of the users have 1-2 years of experience in using the emulator to play mobile games, and 36.5% of the users have more than 2 years of experience. This means that most users have rich experience in mobile games and emulators. In addition, 17.2% of users have played for less than one year, which indicates that more and more new players are using emulators.

35.7% of users use the emulator every day, and 29% of users use the emulator to play games 3-5 days a week. Of these users, 56% spend more than 3 hours a day. Even for ordinary users, only 12.8% of users use the emulator for less than 1 hour. Generally speaking, users are willing to pay for the services brought by the emulator. According to research data, the proportion of paying users is as high as 61.9%, and nearly half of the users pay more than 200 dollars annually.

India, Brazil, and the United States occupy the top 3 traffic, followed by Vietnam, Indonesia, Russia, Thailand, South Korea, the Philippines, and Turkey. Although the penetration rate of PC Internet users in India is less than 10%, it still occupies the largest share of traffic. This is due to both population and industry reasons. Due to the insufficient advanced level of mobile phone hardware, emulators are one of the most convenient ways for Indian netizens to access the latest high-quality mobile games. For the same reason, Southeast Asia also occupies a large share.

The emulator is an important participant in the upgrading and globalization of the Chinese game industry. It has development opportunities in the market, overseas, products, scenarios and the future, but it will also face various challenges. Only by focusing on the needs of users and developers, continuously optimizing products, exploring broader market development space and more diverse content services, can emulators continue to exert their unique product characteristics and promote the development and upgrading of games and even the entertainment industry.