Tencent Annual Conference: Ma Huateng "Injects Energy"

Author: Huang Yu

Editor: Liu Baodan

In the past few years, the annual meetings of China's star companies have always been the focus of the end and beginning of the year. The most famous ones are the annual meetings of BABA-SWR and WANDA HOTEL DEV. Jack Ma's cosplay and Wang Jianlin's singing performances were impressive, and they were full of energy and vitality.

However, there are not many big companies that hold annual meetings now. The companies that stood out this year are Gree and Tencent. They have one thing in common, which is that their performance last year was good.

However, under the global economic slowdown, the pressure on companies is still looming. As one of the few internet giants that still hold grand annual meetings, Tencent not only had the lively performances of Pony Ma and Zhou Shen, but also a deep reflection on the past year.

On January 29th, at Tencent's offline annual meeting held after a four-year hiatus, Chairman of the Board and CEO Ma Huateng spent nearly half an hour reviewing the company's performance over the past year, with many reflections, and WeChat and games undoubtedly received the most attention.

The importance of WeChat to Tencent is self-evident. It is not only the platform with the highest daily active users and the strongest ecosystem for Tencent, but also the hope for Tencent to find the next strong growth point.

In recent years, Tencent has been accelerating the release of the commercial value of WeChat.

Video accounts, launched three years ago, are an important step for Tencent to build a closed-loop ecosystem for WeChat's commercialization. A year ago, Ma Huateng said that video accounts are the "hope of the entire Tencent". Now he says that after more than a year of development, video accounts have brought many surprises, giving Tencent a solid foothold.

Most importantly, video accounts also carry Ma Huateng's e-commerce dream. He openly stated, "Our user group has strong consumption power, but we still need to make up for the lack of e-commerce knowledge over the years. So what we can fully develop this year is video account live-streaming e-commerce. E-commerce and advertising complement each other."

At the WeChat Open Class at the beginning of the year, the GMV performance of video accounts was disclosed. The data showed that the GMV scale of video account e-commerce in 2023 is expected to triple compared to 2022, and the number of orders has increased by 244%+. Among the purchasing users, women accounted for 78%, and clothing orders ranked first in the industry, accounting for 38% of the total.

The specific GMV data of video accounts has not been made public, but according to industry estimates, its GMV may exceed 300 billion yuan, and the actual payment GMV is about 150 billion yuan.

Although compared to the trillion GMV of platforms like Douyin and Kuaishou, the e-commerce volume of video accounts still has a long way to go, but compared to Tencent's past achievements in e-commerce, this is already a significant breakthrough.Of course, the challenges facing the development of Video Account are also evident. In addition to the immature content ecosystem, a live-streaming e-commerce insider told Wall Street News that Tencent always prioritizes the user experience of WeChat, so it is more cautious in promoting Video Account e-commerce. Internal approval processes and product testing times are also longer.

With the rapid growth of live-streaming e-commerce platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and Xiaohongshu, Tencent must act quickly.

In addition to Video Account, games, as Tencent's core business, were also a key focus of Ma Huateng's comments at the annual meeting, and he spoke with more emphasis.

Ma Huateng stated that games are Tencent's flagship business and currently the world's largest game company, seemingly resting on the laurels of success. "But in the past year, we have faced significant challenges. There has been a constant emergence of new-generation game companies, and we have been at a loss in adapting to the shift from gameplay-oriented to content-oriented games. Our competitors keep launching new products, and we feel like we have made little progress."

Indeed, faced with competition from rivals such as NetEase and miHoYo, Tencent launched new games last year but did not meet expectations.

The only game specifically mentioned by Ma Huateng was "Star of Eternity," which was launched a month and a half ago. Ma Huateng said, "For us, 'Star of Eternity' is not just a game, it also has a social element, which is our stronghold. We must go all out and require all business units to collaborate and explore common development."

This is the first time Ma Huateng has publicly emphasized the importance of "Star of Eternity."

Tencent has clearly elevated "Star of Eternity" to the strategic level of the group. It is not just a party game competing against NetEase's "Egg Party," but also a channel for Tencent to seize new social territory.

A game planner told Wall Street News that "Star of Eternity" has user-generated content (UGC) features, allowing players to create their own content. UGC is a very popular trend and direction in the future game industry, and Tencent must seize it.

In terms of commercialization, the DataEye Research Institute pointed out that "Star of Eternity" is focusing on offline derivatives, small games, and deep cultivation of content and influencers. It clearly aims to seize various social entertainment scenes, create IP, and is not in a hurry to monetize. In addition, "Star of Eternity" is a "top-level" product for Tencent, indicating that it is focused on strategic layout, increasing daily active users (DAU), occupying the entrance, and taking a long-term view.

Over the past month, Tencent has spared no effort in promoting "Star of Eternity," even giving the green light to the previously disapproved "buying traffic." On January 26th, "Star of Eternity" officially announced that it had registered over 80 million users in its first month, and millions of user-created maps were born.

Regarding the future development direction of the gaming business, Ma Huateng also made requirements. He pointed out that Tencent hopes to achieve horizontal depth and solid development in software and game research and development, rather than engaging in vertical conflicts with other game companies or hardware manufacturers. The key is to find its own core business and focus on it, which will lead to greater success.Ma Huateng said, "Now we are revitalized as if we have been injected with chicken blood, and we have returned to the process of how we gradually rose from being ranked outside the top ten in the gaming industry. When we recall the difficulties of entrepreneurship, we will have the fighting spirit. We cannot rest on our laurels and must keep moving forward."

However, it is not easy for Tencent Games to restore the entrepreneurial spirit of the early days. It requires the courage to make changes and break free from the "big company syndrome".

Tencent Games is making new attempts. It is reported that at the beginning of this year, Tencent Games sent an email to all employees announcing the launch of the "Spring Shoots Plan", increasing investment in the research and development of new opportunities, new gameplay, and niche games. It mobilizes internal teams to propose medium-sized projects and provides corresponding incentives at the business group and group levels.

Ren Yuxin, Tencent's COO and President of Interactive Entertainment Group (IEG), also revealed at the annual meeting that the "Spring Shoots" plan is designed to encourage small teams to work on dark horse projects. Small teams should develop games that they are most knowledgeable and skilled in, and create games that they love the most. This will attract users with similar aesthetics and preferences to also enjoy the game, gradually breaking through barriers.

In addition, IEG also has a "Greens" plan, which involves investing with studios, sharing risks, and helping Tencent Games seize more "white horse" opportunities in the future to create "blockbuster games" for the mass market. Ren Yuxin pointed out that to create a "blockbuster game", it is necessary to have significantly better quality than similar games and require large-scale resource investment.

In November last year, Ma Huateng stated internally that the best people should be put on the field. From Ma Huateng's speech at the annual meeting, it can be seen that Tencent is currently in a critical period of regaining its best state. In addition to WeChat and games, he also demands that the ToB business must quickly come ashore and emerge, which is an internal pressure.

As the top-valued internet company in China, Tencent has been doing well for many years relying on its gaming and WeChat advertising businesses. It can even hold an annual meeting, thanks to the company's stable and cautious values.

However, despite Tencent's efforts in new businesses such as cloud, AI, and e-commerce in recent years, it has not made revolutionary progress. Last year, Tencent lost its position as the revenue leader to ByteDance. Against the backdrop of companies like Alibaba and Meituan undergoing radical reforms, the future direction of Tencent has become an increasingly urgent question.

It is time for Tencent to make some thorough changes.