Cathay Pacific Haitong: AI is expected to open up new growth space in the game industry and focus on three types of beneficiary directions

The Zhitong Finance App learned that Cathay Pacific Haitong released a research report saying that the impact of AI on the game industry is extending from R&D efficiency improvement to gameplay innovation, creation platforms, and AI-native games, driving game supply expansion and user value increase. As model capabilities increase and call costs decrease, AI is expected to open up new growth space for the game industry. Focus on the three types of benefit directions. 1) Improving AI R&D efficiency; 2) AI gameplay innovation; 3) AI creation platform.

Cathay Pacific Haitong's main views are as follows:

AI is reshaping game development and product experience

Looking back at the development history of the game industry, from home consoles and PC internet to mobile internet, every round of technological progress has brought new game forms and expanded user needs and commercial space. Currently, AI has entered various aspects of planning, art, programming, distribution, and operation. It can be used for content generation, automatic testing, code writing, and intelligent delivery to help shorten the R&D cycle and reduce production costs. At the same time, AI has also begun to be applied to game products, increasing interaction and content supply through AI teammates, intelligent NPCs, adaptive difficulty, and new AI gameplay, and the impact is gradually extending from the R&D process to the player experience.

AI game creation platform lowers development threshold

Platforms such as TapTap manufacturing and SOON have evolved from a single-point auxiliary tool to a one-stop creative platform covering code, art, audio, and game assembly and publishing. Users can complete part of the development process through natural language and simple operation, enabling individuals and small teams to create games at a lower cost and in a shorter cycle. As the number of developers increases, it is expected that AI-assisted games will continue to increase, and game creation participants will also become more diverse. Platforms with both content communities and distribution capabilities, such as TapTap, allow creators to directly publish and reach players after completing games, which is expected to benefit from increased game supply and form a certain amount of distribution channels.

AI-native games are expected to open up new growth space

As model capabilities improve and inference costs decrease, new game categories such as natural language character interaction, generative storytelling, multi-agent simulation, and generative construction have begun to emerge, evolving game content from presets to dynamic generation, and exploring new payment methods such as subscriptions and conversation quotas. Currently, product-side AI penetration is still low. AI capabilities are mainly concentrated in some leading products and innovative gameplay. In the future, as technology matures and development costs decline, more AI capabilities are expected to enter game products. AI is expected not only to increase the supply of games and new categories, but also to expand the value of individual products by increasing activity, retention, and payment. According to Gamma data, when AI technology matures, it is expected to bring 53.3 billion to 84.6 billion yuan of additional space to the Chinese game market.

Risk warning: AI technology and application results fall short of expectations; commercialization of AI games falls short of expectations; industry competition intensifies; copyright, data security and privacy protection risks; risk of changes in industry regulatory policies