Chapter 635 539 Is Fake! It Must Be Pokeni's Fake!
…
Yes, how does "Border Online" make money?
Does pokeni generate electricity for love?
On Sony's side, Ken Kutaragi fell into deep suspicion.
It doesn’t feel like Qing Zhiyuan’s style.
Where can there be unprofitable businessmen in the world, let alone a cunning fox like Qing Zhiyuan?
From the first day he met Qing Zhiyuan, Kutaragi Ken had a very clear understanding of this guy:
Qing Zhiyuan seems to be quite idealistic and likes innovation, but in the final analysis, all creative behaviors, whether it is making games, designing game controllers, or acquiring Sega...
It's all about making money.
Even if it is running the Internet, P-NET cannot generate electricity for love. It is just as simple as providing more convenient consultation and content downloading.
They will need to advertise later.
Thinking of the advertisement, Kutaragi Ken's fingers suddenly trembled.
Is there such a possibility?
Border Online is different from the traditional game model. It does not rely on content payment to make money. Instead, it makes money through advertising?
Hmm, this is very likely!
…
At the same time, Rentendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto had similar thoughts.
Mainly because the pokeni model is so new.
Before the game was released, Shigeru Miyamoto had imagined whether pokeni would adopt the same operating model as "Sparrow Soul".
That is to say, through in-game currencies, such as Bird Soul Happy Beans, and taking advantage of players' gambler psychology to make money, it is equivalent to building another large-scale online gaming platform.
But if you think about it carefully, this possibility should be unlikely.
In terms of game content and gameplay, "Border Online", which is a shooting game as its main core, and "Qinghun", a mahjong game with a strong gambling nature, are two completely different things.
You, the latter, are naturally game-playing, and require almost no teaching, so anyone who likes mahjong can get started.
Can the border be online?
Tell me, how is this thing gambling? !
Do you have to press thousands of Happy Beans every time before entering a game level to compete with others?
Then the winning party gets this part of the reward?
Don't you feel very attractive?
It only takes a minute or two at most to play a mahjong game, and it can even be doubled dozens of times after the settlement.
How tempting is this game?
But shooting games are not as simple as games. They rely on technology to make a living.
Some people are born to be better than others in shooting games, whether it is reaction speed, hit rate, accuracy and action ability, including strategic command ability...
These are all gifts.
There are too many things involved in Border Online, and it is not as simple as luck. In addition to personal ability, it also requires the cooperation of teammates, which has risen to the technical and tactical level.
Under such circumstances, border online PVP is a contest of strength, and the proportion of luck will naturally decrease a lot.
This is naturally in conflict with gambling.
Therefore, Shigeru Miyamoto thought a little and rejected the idea that "Border Online" would make money from the "Sparrow Soul" model.
In order to study pokeni's strategy more carefully, Shigeru Miyamoto himself also downloaded "Border Online"
After playing for a while, he discovered an amazing fact——
In this game, players can really play quite well without paying any money, and the experience gained is not reduced at all.
Because in the game, the only things that can be paid with point cards are some clothing and props in the mall.
For example, the Jungle Hunter skin was put on the shelves in the first week: it looks quite wild, with green camouflage equipment, but the texture is very good, and it has the characteristics of modern warfare.
This look is designed for military enthusiasts.
There are also some more playful clothes. For example, in the mall, Shigeru Miyamoto also found a set of Pokémon-linked appearances.
The English name is avatar.
Chinese writing: skin.
Although he doesn't know why AVATAR needs to be translated into skin.
But it always feels weird.
In fact, the word itself does not come from English, but from Sanskrit.
In Indian mythology, Avatar is the incarnation of God.
That is the meaning of incarnation.
This is actually the meaning of "Avatar" directed by Cameron. Avatar itself is a symbolic term. It is not just a simple name used in the movie. More importantly, it is to express the incarnation of God and the salvation of the world through incarnation. This metaphor.
So this movie looks like a science fiction movie, but it actually has some theology mixed into it.
In fact, pokeni's employees didn't quite understand why Qing Zhiyuan gave these fashions such names at first. Later, there was a programmer named Asan among his colleagues in the United States.
After his explanation, everyone understood:
oh! It turns out to be the incarnation of God!
President Qing Zhiyuan is too literate, right?
He is simply knowledgeable. Not only is he proficient in neon and Chinese culture, but he has even dabbled in something as unfamiliar as Sanskrit.
To be honest, when hearing this word, Asan programmers were still a little proud.
Qing Zhiyuan invisibly created a wave of good impressions in the hearts of these people.
It further deepened people's impression of him as an internationalist.
However, the truth is-
When Qing Zhiyuan was naming clothes or skins in English, he didn't think much about it at the time and just used avatar.
That's because in his previous life, he was a programmer for MiHoYa, and many planners said this when making requests.
It is a common practice in the industry to call it avatar, and it has become a habit over time.
So when he was setting the skin in this life, he instinctively gave it a name like AVATAR.
But he didn't expect that such an English word with a transliteration of Sanskrit could actually make him act cool and gain a good impression.
But if you asked him why he called him this name, Qing Zhiyuan himself probably wouldn't be able to tell you.
…
In short, when Miyamoto Shigeru saw those props in the mall that had no properties at all, he instinctively rejected the idea that this thing could make money.
Even if there are players who really like it and buy it, it is still a virtual product. Can the clothes you wear in the game still be brought into reality?
And it doesn't provide any attributes, and it can't increase your firepower, speed up your movement, or anything like that, so you can't keep yourself apart from other players.
What determines the experience of Border Online is always the player's own level and the constraints of the human body.
Therefore, after a little analysis, Shigeru Miyamoto easily came up with the idea that "this thing can't be sold for much money at all."
This is not just mental inertia.
The main reason is that selling something like avatar is indeed a bit counter-intuitive.
From an economic point of view, the most important reason why a product can be sold for money is that it must provide value to users.
The value of virtual goods itself is a very virtual thing.
After much thought, the conclusion he could finally draw was consistent with Kutaragi Ken——
It is estimated that the commercialization strategy is to continuously expand the user base and then place advertisements. This is also in line with the characteristics of the Dandelion game platform.
The only problem is, can there really be that many players in Frontier Online?
…
In fact, Shigeru Miyamoto still underestimated pokeni's new game.
The number of players of "Border Online" is growing rapidly. By July, it had more than 30 million registered players worldwide, and the total number of online players had reached an astonishing 1.5 million.
Most of them are contributed by players in the Omi region.
Chinese players also offer a lot.
In particular, the growth rate in China has not only not slowed down, but has even become increasingly fierce.
Before this, no one thought that such a game wasteland could actually erupt with such a powerful force.
Chinese players are a frowned-upon group for many game developers. On the one hand, influenced and influenced by piracy culture, in 2001, most Chinese players had no so-called awareness of paying.
This is not caused by the legendary lack of money.
It is purely a matter of market and habits. It has not been cultivated. Coupled with the impact of the ban on game consoles, game consoles and genuine cassette discs may have sprouted in this land, but in the end they withered.
But this does not mean that Chinese players have no demand or desire for games.
On the contrary, it is precisely because there are not so many games to choose from that they have great enthusiasm for games.
Especially with such a large population base, it is not easy to have a large-scale game that is free for everyone to enjoy, and it has suddenly activated the market.
If we say that the hunger marketing strategy implemented by Qing Zhiyuan for several months at the beginning of this year was aimed at players in the Neon and Omi regions.
Then Chinese players have been engaged in hunger marketing for more than ten years.
Not only are they crying for food, they are simply dying of hunger in the world.
Once it is fed in, and it can satisfy the consumption habits and methods of Chinese players, and fit their hobbies, the results will continue to rise.
According to Qing Zhiyuan, it is——
This is not a group of players, this is clearly a group of evil wolves!
Before everyone was aware of the huge potential market in China, pokeni actually made plans early.
And Qing Zhiyuan is very sure of this. Once the Chinese market is opened, this place will become a treasure house of pokeni in the future.
It is no exaggeration to say it is a big gold mine.
…
Not long after, pokeni’s official website announced the number of players of “Border Online” in China:
The total number of registered people has reached a terrifying 4 million, and the number of people online at the same time exceeds 100,000.
The results of "Border Online" shocked all colleagues.
"I can't believe that a game like "Border Online" can actually have so many people in China?"
“Fake, fake, all fake.
pokeni's data has no credibility at all.
In China, many people don't even have computers, so where do so many registered users come from? "
"I always feel like Pokeni is playing me.
This is completely fake data, right?"
"That's right. I just checked the data. The number of people with computers in China in 2001 was only over 25 million.
And many people who have computers use them for work, and rarely use them to play games.
I estimate that the number of personal home computer users is less than 5 million.
So Pokeni's data must be fake.
Think about it, people who don't even have game consoles, what can they use to play games?
Could it be that all these 5 million computer users are playing "Borderline Online"?"
"Hahaha, it's really fake at first glance. I knew there couldn't be so many. Pokeni's behavior is really bad. They just want to deceive their competitors to place more ads and then falsify data, right?
This method is too low."
"How can Pokeni be so bad? They can do anything."
"It's a free game anyway. Pokeni is not a listed company. Just take a look at the data. It doesn't count at all."
...
However, just when everyone was shouting that Pokeni's data was fake, they also felt that they couldn't have so many users.
Many people, including Shigeru Miyamoto, felt that the game "Border Online" had almost no profitability, and would even lose a lot of money due to bandwidth and maintenance costs.
Soon, the sales results of "Border Online" on Pokeni's side were announced, which slapped their faces.
Although Pokeni is not a listed company, they still announced a set of important data two months after the game was publicly tested.
The first is the average number of online players and the average online time.
The second data is also the data that the world cares about the most---sales.
Landing in the US in May, in the June financial report, "Borderline Online" generated more than $120 million in sales in the US.
And in July, it continued to rise, reaching $134 million.
Everyone was a little confused when they saw this.
The data for the Chinese region was even more confusing:
The service was launched in June, and the sales in China in July reached more than 300 million RMB.
When they saw this data, everyone was silent.
If the number of players is fictitious by Pokeni, then the number of servers and the monthly bandwidth fees, electricity fees... and other expenses are all real.
Just check and you will know clearly whether Paradox is lying.
And -
Even if the number of users is exaggerated, where does such a high turnover come from?
You have to know that a monthly income of $120 million can only be achieved by a game with at least 2 million copies sold per month.
In other words, now relying solely on the game "Borderline Online", even if Pokeni does nothing, it is equivalent to releasing a million-level masterpiece every month.
"My brain is about to die, I really can't understand the current situation.
Why, Pokeni's "Border Online" is obviously a free game, but it can still make so much money?"
"Did some big brands invest in advertisements? But I didn't see any other company's advertisements in the game "Border Online"."
"Is the financial report fake?!"
"Is Pokeni too bold?"
"My goodness, Pokeni is using another lie to cover up a lie, right? Just to cover up that there are not so many players, he fabricated such terrible data that the monthly turnover reached more than 100 million US dollars?
What's the purpose?
Just to be praised by the players for being awesome?"
"But what else can be explained? I can no longer understand the current situation."
In addition, everyone can't think of any other reason to explain all this weirdness.
"It can't be true, right?"
"No, I still don't understand, a free game can achieve this level just by selling avatars in the mall?!"
"Yeah, why? Can a free game have high sales?
It can't be that Qing Zhiyuan knows magic?"
"Why make games if he knows magic? Isn't it better to just make money?"
"I can't figure it out, I can't figure it out!"
"Damn, it must be Pokeni's fraud!"
...
...(End of this chapter)