Tokyo: Being coveted by my wife, I just want to play games

Chapter 445 Preparing for Takeoff
The popularity of Hearthstone continues.

In other words, as time goes by, coupled with the huge amount of publicity and promotion funds invested by Dongchuan Che, the popularity of "Hearthstone" is getting higher and higher. Moreover, games like "Hearthstone" are indeed very suitable for the current era of the rise of mobile games.

There is a saying that goes, what you can’t get on the battlefield, you can’t get at the negotiating table either.

Before Dongchuan Che made his own handheld game console, when FGO was released, he approached mobile phone manufacturers to discuss cooperation, but they were all arrogant and asked for 50% or 60% commission.

Although these are all exorbitant prices and low returns, generally speaking, in the end, the maximum commission is about 40%.

Dongchuan Che couldn't accept this number, but he had no choice before.

It's like for people who go to big cities to work. The rent is expensive, and sometimes one-third of their salary has to be paid to the landlord. But if people from other places who don't have a house want to continue living in the big city, they have to pay the rent.

It doesn’t make sense that the price is so high, but the point is, it doesn’t matter whether it makes sense or not, because there is no place to argue.

Dongchuan Che was like this before, and sometimes he could only swallow his anger, but now it’s different.

Although the GO handheld console will not be released for another two days, the configuration and price of the GO handheld console were announced on the second day after Hearthstone was released.

How cost-effective is this?

Some hardcore gamers and anchors would go to some online shopping platform to buy corresponding accessories according to the accessory list of GO handheld. After this comparison, they were shocked to find that they needed to pay almost 50% more than the price of GO handheld to buy the same accessories, not to mention the installation fees, logistics fees, and system usage fees!

The price of the GO handheld game console is only three thousand, but its performance can match that of a game console that players can build by themselves at a cost of more than four thousand!

Of course, the manufacturer's wholesale price is definitely much lower than the retail price, but the gap is too big!

This is equivalent to selling 4060S to players at the price of 4070!

Needless to say, the GO handheld game console's super high cost-effectiveness caused a sensation in the market as soon as it was announced! The GOGO platform, many cooperating online shopping platforms, and some offline suppliers all said that the pre-order orders were full and applied for additional stock!

To be honest, Dongchuan Che had already predicted this heated scene.

Most gamers have a bit of hamster syndrome. They like to hoard movies and games and create a safe and fulfilling environment for themselves. In today's era, this is actually an ecological problem.

To put it simply, it's like Apple headphones and Apple Watch.

These two gadgets are actually dispensable, and the price is not low. There are many low-priced alternatives. Users who have not bought an Apple phone will basically not consider them. But if they have an Apple phone and happen to not have headphones and watches, then these users will consider whether to buy these products in the Apple ecosystem to fill the [gap].

This phenomenon is very common, because this is one of the primitive desires of human beings to pursue self-improvement, but this desire is not as strong as sexual desire and the desire for survival. In other words, the desire for perfection and the desire for self-improvement are also for the purpose of better survival.

Although there are no first-party exclusive masterpieces on the GO handheld, games like FGO, Hearthstone, Stardew Valley, and the previous games are only available on the platform of the Holy Light Society. In addition, most third-party games that are available on the GOGO platform will also be available on the GO handheld.

These things are actually enough to arouse the players' desire to complete the game. Moreover, his Dongchuan Che's GO handheld game console is really very conscientious and has a very high cost performance.

If I have to describe it, it's like ASUS suddenly announced that users of ASUS motherboards can get a 4090% discount on the purchase of 7 graphics cards, and offer 24 interest-free installments. It would be strange if gamers didn't take the bait.

The pre-sale of the GO handheld game console was a huge hit, which was also within Dongchuan Che's expectations. However, in addition to the enthusiasm of the players, the GO handheld game console also made those mobile phone manufacturers who were once arrogant to be intimidated.

As the old saying goes: What you can’t get on the battlefield, you can’t get at the negotiating table either.

The only difference is that this sentence used to refer to Dongchuan Che, but now it refers to mobile phone channel operators.

As long as the GO handheld console becomes a hit, Dongchuan Che will no longer have to look at their faces, and the main source of income for mobile phone channel dealers is the commission.

If only FGO was separated from the entire mobile channel, they could still bite the bullet and continue to fight, but now Hearthstone is also very popular! And those who are slightly more informed in the industry know that Hearthstone is not Fuyukawa Che's trump card. Pokémon, which will be released with the GO handheld in two days, is Fuyukawa Che's trump card this year!
Today, no one doubts Toshikawa Che's game-making ability anymore. Even though Hearthstone is so popular now, it's not the best. How high can the quality of Pokémon be?!

The cake is too big!
For capital, not having a piece of cake means losing out!

As a result, just two days after Hearthstone was released, various mobile phone channel dealers came to us and took the initiative to significantly reduce their commissions, hoping that Dongchuan Che would continue to cooperate. However, it was useless.

On the one hand, although Dongchuan Che could understand that commercial competition was like this, the faces of those channel dealers were too disgusting. At that time, Kawaguchi went to them to discuss the commission, but he was asked to show off two bottles of Maotai before he was qualified to come to the table to discuss business!

Kawaguchi is the type who doesn't like to complain, and his talent ceiling is indeed not high. Therefore, as the scale of Holy Light Society has grown over the years, there has been a lot of gossip in the industry, saying that Kawaguchi can only be where he is today because of Dongchuan Che's nostalgia, and that in fact, in terms of ability, he is not worthy of being an executive of a large company like Holy Light Society.

Kawaguchi was born in a rural family. He was honest and simple, and he was not very ambitious. If he didn't have a sick mother to take care of and wanted to give Amei a better life,
When Dongchuan Che had a drink and chatted with him before, he had said many times that what he wanted more was to go to a small city with a slower pace of life and live a simple life with a wife and children. Kawaguchi was indeed not a man with a strong ambition for career, or rather, a man with a strong ambition for career generally had nothing to do with being honest and kind. It was impossible for a person to be honest and kind and ambitious at the same time, that was schizophrenia. However, Kawaguchi had another characteristic in his personality, that was being very stubborn.

That was why, after the drinking incident, Kawaguchi went to the hospital to have his gastric pumped the next day, and Dongchuan Che couldn't find anyone on the phone, so he learned everything from other people.

Business competition is business competition, and Dongchuan Che can understand the approach of Bao and Executive Director Kuriyama, who "talk about business instead of feelings, and see who can maximize profits based on their abilities, but at the same time, they will not deliberately disgust others outside of business." But he was really annoyed by the approach of saying that one must drink two bottles of white wine before being qualified to speak.

but
He had no choice at the time because the other person was in the country and his arms were not that long. But this time it was different.

When several chubby executives from the mobile phone channel flew to Japan and invited Dongchuan Che to dinner, they were still laughing, thinking that Dongchuan Che's reputation was exaggerated, and he was ruthless and sentimental, but in fact, he had to smile obediently when he saw the benefits. The several large boxes of wool tables and two rows of Japanese Yakuza with tattoos in the karaoke box stunned them.

Dongchuan Che naturally did not stay to drink and sing with them. He patted their shoulders and said "Drink first before leaving", then left the karaoke bar with a "Wang Yousheng smile".

As for whether it would be a problem if a few people drank nearly ten boxes of Maotai?
It was not a big problem. The karaoke bar he specially found was not far from a hospital. He even hired two doctors to accompany the guests in the karaoke bar to ensure that everyone drank enough and just enough to reach the killing line. After drinking enough, they would be scared of the sight of alcohol and could leave.

As for whether there will be trouble later
Dongchuan Che is not a reckless man. When Kawaguchi was forced to drink, he couldn't fight back, but he sent people to collect a lot of evidence. He just didn't want to go through official procedures to give the other party an advantage.

If a fight really came to a head, he wouldn't be afraid at all since he has both reason, money and power.

As for business cooperation.
This is even less of a problem, just like when Kawaguchi showed off two bottles of Maotai in order to close the deal. As long as the distributors still want to get a piece of the pie, they will still come to us in the end.
To be honest, Dongchuan Che was not planning to release Hearthstone on mobile channels at first. However, as the number of pre-orders for the GO handheld console increased significantly and the number of pre-orders for Pokémon was also exaggerated, he started Plan B.

On the one hand, he did not allow Hearthstone to be listed on mobile channels because he did not want to be charged a high commission. But now, with the popularity of Hearthstone, this problem is no longer a problem, and those channel dealers are begging him. On the other hand, at the beginning, Dongchuan Che was not particularly sure about the sales volume of [GO Handheld].

After all, there are too few first-party games for the GO handheld, so he thinks it is better to tie "Hearthstone" and "Pokemon" to the GO handheld.

But the situation is different now. The promotion of "Hearthstone" did not indicate that this game would be exclusive to the GO handheld on mobile devices, but the number of pre-orders for the GO handheld is still very high due to its extremely high cost-effectiveness and the popularity of "Pokemon".

If these two problems are solved, then Plan B, which is to bring Hearthstone to mobile phones, will work. After all, mobile phones have the widest user base, and those players who originally had no interest in consoles but played Hearthstone on mobile phones may also want to buy a GO handheld.

The launch of Hearthstone on mobile platforms may help expand the business scope of Holy Light Society. After all, many mobile game users don’t pay attention to single-player and online games.

This is not a problem of discrimination, but because different trades are like different mountains. It's like some people often watch TV series, but because they don't watch American TV series, they don't even know what "A Song of Ice and Fire" is.

This does not mean that American dramas are necessarily better than domestic dramas. People simply don’t pay attention to the American drama circle. At the same time, American dramas do not have enough publicity and promotion resources to break through the circle in China. In fact, many American dramas cannot be watched in China.

By the same token, stand-alone games have always been a very niche circle.

The reason why Switch was able to sell 1.6 million units in the past was mainly due to those key events that went viral, plus some luck.

For example, when the game "Ring Fit Adventure" was first released, the price including the fitness ring was only over 300 yuan, and no one bought it, but then the new coronavirus pandemic occurred.

During that period, Nintendo took the opportunity to heavily promote home sports, which resulted in the game being sold out. The price on Taobao went from over 400 yuan to more than 1,400 or 1,500 yuan.

Another example is "Man Picking Up Sticks", this social game was also popular all over the world at the time, attracting countless passers-by to buy the Switch handheld game console.

To put it bluntly, although there are works such as "Zelda: Breath of the Wild" and "Xenoblade Chronicles" on Switch, the games that really raised its sales ceiling are actually light games such as "Ring Fit" and "The Stickman" that focus more on social attributes. In Fuyukawa Che's opinion, "Hearthstone" also has such potential.

Hearthstone does not require any operation or reaction. Teenagers and middle-aged people in their twenties and twenties can play it. If you have to say it, it is actually the same as playing cards.

However, the rules of "Hearthstone" are definitely more complicated than those of "Ring Fit". For pure game newcomers, the difficulty of getting started is still a little higher than that of "Ring Fit". That is why, after discussing with Miyano Mite and others during this period, Dongchuan Che has begun to adjust the promotion direction of "Hearthstone".

Yes, adjust the direction of publicity and promotion.

If Hearthstone in the past few days focused on promoting the depth of the game and the amount of game content, then during this period, the Holy Light Society has focused on popularizing the gameplay of Hearthstone to people outside the circle.

To this end, Miyano Mitsuha and her colleagues also found a large number of UP hosts on video websites such as Bilibili and YouTube to make teaching videos for "Hearthstone". Not only can they make money by posting videos, but there are also bonuses if the number of views reaches a certain amount.

In addition, his Hearthstone by Toru Fuyukawa also weakened the overly fantasy style of the previous life in terms of character portraits and overall game style.

Not only has more cards been added to the card illustrations that are more in line with normal human aesthetics, the card game designs in the game have also been slightly modified. All of this is because Fuchu Chuanche hopes that Hearthstone can attract more users outside the circle, thereby boosting the sales of Hearthstone and GO handheld. And obviously, if you want to attract users outside the circle, letting Hearthstone log in to the mobile terminal is definitely a very good way.

The characteristics of private enterprises are that they have a keener sense of the market, can make changes more quickly, and do not need to report to higher authorities. Dong Chuan Che is the same. After noticing the change in the situation, he also began to contact those mobile phone channel dealers, but this time, the channel fee is definitely not the ridiculous 50% or 60%.

(End of this chapter)