Horrible! Actually playing this kind of game!

...

Yeah, how does "Border Online" make money?

Is Pokeni doing it for love?

On Sony's side, Ken Kutaragi was in deep doubt.

It doesn't seem like Qing Zhiyuan's style.

Where in the world are there businessmen who don't seek profit, let alone a cunning fox like Qing Zhiyuan?

From the first day he met Qing Zhiyuan, Ken Kutaragi had a very clear understanding of this guy:

Qing Zhiyuan looks idealistic and likes innovation, but in the final analysis, all creative behaviors, whether it is making games, designing game controllers, or acquiring Sega...

are all for making money.

Even if it is to run the Internet, P-NET cannot be doing it for love, it is just providing more convenient consultation and content downloads.

Later, they had to advertise.

Thinking of advertising, Ken Kutaragi'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 earn income, but makes money through advertising?

Yeah, this possibility is very high!

…

At the same time, Shigeru Miyamoto of Rentendo also had similar ideas.

The main reason is that the model of Pokeni is too new.

Before the game was launched, Shigeru Miyamoto had imagined whether Pokeni would adopt the same operating model as "Mahjong Soul".

That is, through the currency in the game, such as the happy beans of the Soul of Mahjong, making money by taking advantage of the gambler mentality of the players, it is equivalent to making another large-scale online gaming platform.

But if you think about it carefully, this possibility should not be great.

In terms of game content and gameplay, "Borderline Online", which is mainly a shooting game, and "Mahjong Soul", which has a strong gambling nature, are two completely different things.

Your latter is naturally a game, and there is almost no need for any teaching, and people who like mahjong can get started.

But Borderline Online?

Tell me, how does this thing gamble? !

Do you have to bet a few thousand happy beans there every time before entering the game level to fight against others?

And then the winning party gets this part of the reward?

It doesn't seem very attractive?

A game of mahjong takes only one or two minutes at most, and the money can be multiplied dozens of times after settlement.

How tempting is this game.

But shooting games are not as simple as gambling. They rely on skills to make a living.

Some people are born better than others in shooting games, whether it is reaction speed, hit rate, accuracy and action ability, including strategic command ability...

These are all talents.

There are too many things involved in a game of Border Online, and it is not as simple as good luck. In addition to personal ability, it also requires the cooperation of teammates, which has risen to the level of skills and tactics.

In this case, the pvp of Border Online is a contest of strength, and the proportion of luck will naturally decrease a lot.

This is naturally contradictory to gambling.

So Shigeru Miyamoto thought about it and denied the idea that "Border Online" would make a profit by relying on the "Mahjong Soul" model.

In order to study the strategy of Pokeni more carefully, Shigeru Miyamoto also downloaded "Borderline Online" himself. After playing for a while, he discovered an amazing fact---In this game, players can really play quite well without paying, and the experience is not reduced at all. Because in the game, the only thing that can be paid with a point card is some clothes and props in the mall. For example, the jungle hunter skin launched in the first week: it looks wild, with green camouflage equipment, but the texture is very good, and it has the characteristics of modern warfare. This 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 linkage appearance. The English name is avatar. Chinese writing: skin. Although he didn't know why AVATAR was translated into skin. But it always felt weird. In fact, this 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 Cameron's "Avatar". Avatar itself is a noun with symbolic meaning. It is not just a simple name in the movie. More importantly, it expresses the incarnation of God and the metaphor of saving the world through incarnation.

So this movie looks like a science fiction movie, but in fact it is also mixed with some theology.

In fact, the employees of Pokeni didn't quite understand why Qing Zhiyuan gave these fashions such names at first. Later, there was an Indian programmer among the colleagues in the United States.

After his explanation, everyone understood:

Oh! It turned out to be the incarnation of God!

President Qing Zhiyuan is too cultured, right?

He is really knowledgeable. Not only is he proficient in Japanese and Chinese culture, but now he has even dabbled in such obscure things 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 worked as 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 routine 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 the 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.

Isn’t this completely data fraud? "

"That's right, I just checked the information. The number of people with computers released by China in 2001 was only over 25 million.

And many people who have computers are for office use and are rarely used to play games.

I estimate that the number of personal home computer users is not even 5 million.

So pokeni’s data must be fake.

Think about it, what do people who don’t even own a game console use to play games?

Is it possible that all these 5 million computer users are playing "Border Online"? "

"Hahahaha, it's really fake at first glance. I knew there couldn't be that many of them. Pokemoni's behavior is really bad. It's just to deceive friends and businessmen into placing more ads and then falsify the data, right?

This method is too inferior. "

"Why is pokeni so bad? He can do anything bad."

"It's a free game anyway, and Pokeni is not a listed company. Just look at the data, but it's impossible to count."

…

However, just as everyone was shouting that pokeni data was fake, they also felt that they could not have that many users.

Many people, including Shigeru Miyamoto, feel that the game "Border Online" has almost no profitability, and even sometimes suffers a lot of losses due to bandwidth and maintenance costs.

Soon the sales results of Pokeni's "Border Online" were announced, and they were slapped in the face.

Although pokeni is not a listed company, they still released a set of important data two months after the game's public beta.

The first one is the average number of online players and the average online time.

The second data is also the data that the whole world is most concerned about——

turnover.

It landed in the United States in May. According to the financial report in June, "Border Online" created a turnover of more than 120 million US dollars in the United States.

In July, it continued to rise, reaching US$134 million.

Everyone was a little confused when they saw this.

The data in China is even more confusing:

The server was launched in June, and the turnover in China reached more than 300 million RMB in July.

When seeing this data, everyone was silent.

If the number of players is fictitious by pokeni, then the number of servers, monthly bandwidth costs, electricity bills, etc. are all real.

Just by looking it up, you can clearly know whether P Agency is lying.

and--

Even if the number of users is exaggerated, where does such a high turnover come from?

You must know that a monthly revenue of 120 million US dollars can only be achieved by a game that has at least a monthly sales volume of more than 2 million copies.

In other words, now just relying on the game "Border Online", even if Pokeni does nothing, it is equivalent to releasing a million-level masterpiece every month.

“My mind is going crazy and I really can’t understand the current situation.

Why, pokeni "Border Online" is obviously a free game, but it can still make so much money? "

"Are there any big brands that have been taken advantage of and put in ads? But I didn't see any ads from other companies in the "Border Online" game."

“Is the financial report fraudulent?!”

"Isn't pokeni too brave?"

"Good guy, pokeni is just using another lie to cover up a lie, right? Just to cover up that there aren't that many players at all, he just fabricated such terrible data as a monthly turnover of more than 100 million US dollars?

What are you picturing?

Just to be praised by the players for being so awesome? "

"But, what else can be explained? I can no longer understand the current situation."

Other than that, no one can think of any reason to explain all this weirdness.

"It can't be true, right?"

"No, I haven't figured it out yet. How can a free game achieve this level of success just by selling avatars in the mall?!"

"Yeah, why? Can free games still have high turnover?

It can't be Qing Zhiyuan who knows magic, right? "

"Why do you play games if you know magic? Why don't you just turn it into money?"

"I can't figure it out, I can't figure it out!"

"Damn it, it must be faked by pokeni!"

…

...(End of chapter)