290. Butterfly effect

Naturally, this time "World of Warcraft" and "Diablo Online" are attributed to the battle between North and South Blizzard.

The word Blizzard has once again become popular and has become the hottest keyword this year.

Many discussion posts about the dispute between North and South Blizzard have been posted on the Internet:

【Who wins the battle between North and South?】

[The Great War, 2006, a year worth remembering, Blizzards in the North and South will eventually determine the winner]

[Tell me why this North-South Blizzard Team won an overwhelming victory in this battle between North and South]

In the QQ group, topics about Blizzard are emerging one after another:

"This time, the North and South Blizzard War is really a magical one. It can be said that it is a trump card exchange between the two sides. North Blizzard took the copyright of South Blizzard's Warcraft and made "World of Warcraft", while South Blizzard took the Diablo series that North Blizzard was originally good at and made "Diablo Online". It is worthy of being a family, and even the idea is so similar. I didn't do it in the previous stand-alone game and I was all focused on being an MMO.

However, in the end, judging from the number of players, it should be Northern Blizzard that won, right?"

"It's not just a victory, it's an overwhelming victory."

"Hahaha, who asked Vivendi to agree to the Northern Blizzard team's resignation application? They obviously just used it as a bargaining chip. They wanted to stay but didn't want to be sold."

"Yes, as a result, Blizzard did not sell it, but instead established a powerful enemy for itself. Now I know it's amazing, right?"

"I can only say that Blizzard is really a god, but this time God stood on the side of Blizzard in the North."

"Hahahaha... At least from this battle, Blizzard in the North won the victory, or the perfect victory of Bomi."

"Yes, so far, I can only say that Boss Cao's vision is really vicious, as if everything was planned. First, he spent a lot of money to buy the copyright of Warcraft from Vivendi, and then he changed his hand to establish a subsidiary in the United States through the former Northern Blizzard team, and finally made a World of Warcraft. I wonder what Vivendi's senior executives thought about seeing this result. Do you regret it if you regret it?"

"By the way, how much did Bomi buy the copyright of Warcraft back then? How do I remember the price is still very high?"

"120 million US dollars, equivalent to about 980 million US dollars."

"Oh my god, is that so much money? Then has Bomi earned it back now?"

"I guess it's not there yet. Think about how much the operation and development costs of others are. After deducting these, I don't know how much they can be left.

But it should be soon. At the current World of Warcraft profit rate, it will be a matter of time before 120 million is earned back."

...

Indeed, Bomi spent $120 million on purchasing the copyright of Warcraft, but has not yet made any profit. The most important reason is that the operating cost of online games is too high.

The amount spent on bandwidth per month is as high as tens of millions.

There are also labor costs, company property, water and electricity... various expenses and publicity expenses, and also a large part of them.

Putting aside these, tax deductions must be carried out according to the policies of different countries. For example, if the subsidiary of Bomi is built on the land of the United States, tax deductions must be carried out according to the tax standards of the United States.

So after deducting all the miscellaneous things, it seems that there will be up to 500 million in revenue every month, but in fact the profit is only 1/5, which is almost 100 million soft sister coins.

However, this advantage is still expanding. As the number of players in World of Warcraft increases, the amount of money you earn will increase every month.

What's more, Bomi has another game under Warcraft-

Warcraft 3.

When the Frozen Throne was released the year before yesterday, Bomi made a huge profit through it, and also successfully promoted the AIR game platform to gain a foothold in Omegia.

The Frozen Throne earned about 1.5 billion for Bomi. Excluding the cost deductions, Bomi finally made almost 500 million in net profit.

The 120 million US dollars back then are almost half of them now.

...

Regarding the results of Dark Online and the comparison and discussions of online players, the Blizzard team is actually very uncomfortable.

Warcraft itself is a very important product of its own, but the copyright was sold to Bomi by Vivendi. Although they still have the Dark Series now, from a world perspective, the Dark Worldview is indeed not that rich, and the room for expansion is actually relatively limited.

The Dark series has its own inherent operating mode. If you don't inherit it, it will be easily criticized by Dark's core fans.

So in the end, the Blizzard team has done its best and delivered a pretty good answer.

The problem is-

There is a World of Warcraft ahead, and this thing is done quite well, which makes the later dark online dwarf in comparison, otherwise it would not have been so tragic.

"Oh, there is no way to do this." Blizzard's ceo Mohami said in discomfort, "We are developing games at about the same time. Apart from MMORPG, the two games actually have little similarities. The key is that the production teams are all from Blizzard, so they are compared by players.

Otherwise we wouldn't be so miserable..."

It can only be said that because of Cao Yang's rebirth, everything in this world is changing. The butterfly flapping its wings triggered a tsunami. Many things are disrupting and rebuilding, becoming another face. Although it seems that the world is still the same world, human technology seems to be the technology of this era, but in fact it is completely different in essence.

Without Cao Yang's intervention, the copyright of Warcraft should still be in the hands of Blizzard, and World of Warcraft should also become Blizzard's most profitable masterpiece, sweeping the world and achieving Blizzard's glory...

However, Blizzard not only lost the monster, but also stood on the opposite side and transformed into the biggest enemy on the road ahead of the Blizzard team.

If they cannot break through this shadow, the future will only be more difficult.

...

Cao Yang cut off many people's old paths, such as Blizzard's World of Warcraft, Grand Legend, NetEase's Journey to the West...

However, Cao Yang's arrival also brought the entire domestic game market and development away from its original trajectory.

Originally, in 2006, our country should have embarked on a major online game, with large MMOs rising together and firmly occupying the game market. Due to the ban on game consoles, Chinese players cannot access the very famous masterpieces and high-quality works abroad, and can only immerse themselves in the good social experience atmosphere of online games.

However, when the AIR game platform became bigger, the trajectory of history changed.

Before 2004, the country was still dominated by online games. After two years of deep cultivation, the AIR game platform has cultivated a group of stand-alone enthusiasts around the world.

This market is not only limited to China, but expands the market to the whole world.

Therefore, domestic game manufacturers have more options.

The online game market, in China, has about 57 million online game population, and this number will gradually increase, and is expected to exceed 100 million by 2007.

The population of stand-alone games may be about 20 million in China, which is due to the fact that Bomi has cultivated it.

At first glance, it seems that there is no future for single-player players, but expanding the market, the number of users of AIR game platforms worldwide has now increased to 100 million.

From this perspective, the two markets will be able to fight.

If domestic game manufacturers want to insist on making stand-alone games, they will not be like they did in their previous lives, because there are not many players, the profit is thin, and they cannot find the soil for survival. As long as your game quality is good and the coverage is wider, you will naturally gain more users.

Especially after Bomi opened the X2 engine, it was equivalent to giving all game companies the most advanced development tools at once.

If foreign game companies could still rely on their own technical accumulation to surpass domestic games in terms of game performance and quality, then when X2 was open source, everyone truly stood on the same platform.

Daewoo's Legend of Sword and Fairy 3 sold well on the AIR game platform, and achieved sales of 1 million copies in 2005.

"Angel Empire 4" caters to the needs and aesthetics of many Ome players. The unique chess gameplay and the design of the worldview of all women have captured the hearts of many Ome and island players. The sales performance is better than that of Fairy Sword 3, and it actually exceeded 1.5 million copies.

This is enough to make Daewoo a fortune, so the company is now catching up on the development of Fairy Sword 4 and Angel Empire 5, hoping to make another wave in 2007.

"The Legend of the Martial Arts and Heluo Studio" developed by Zhiguan Games also achieved 500,000 copies.

besides:

Yu Jun Autin: "The Legend of the Three Kingdoms" series, "Fantasy Three Kingdoms", "The New Two Popular"

Hongyu Technology Co., Ltd.: "Fengse Fantasy" series

They have also achieved a lot of sales results.

It can be sold hundreds of thousands of copies at any time, and even millions of copies, which was something that I could not imagine before 2004.

In 2003, it was already quite amazing to be able to sell 100,000 copies under the pressure of online games.

The returns on stand-alone games made by these companies are no lower than online games at all.

So in this situation, we can go both to do stand-alone and online games, and everyone has more choices.

Domestic technology, market and environment have changed, becoming more in line with the times, and are at the forefront of the international community, so domestic masterpieces have gradually followed.

After NetEase made its first pot of gold in the game field through chess and card games, this time it was preparing to develop a game similar to Bomi's Assassin's Soul.

Daewoo's Immortal 4 is also developing in the direction of ACT, which is also a test work. After all, with Bomi's Assassin Soul in front of him, someone has already discovered the direction, so it should be no problem for those behind him to follow the trend.

...

So now domestic games are single-player and online games, walking on both legs.

Players' vision and appreciation of games have also risen to a relatively high level with Bomi's Aier game platform, and their acceptance of many stand-alone games has also been relaxed.

There was a lack of an aggregation market before, and the Aier Game Platform provided such a market that allows players to gather here and choose their favorite game products.

Many ancient Chinese games that were not popular abroad before were gradually popular in the Ome region driven by the Shanhai Jing and the Soul of Assassin, and the ancient Chinese culture successfully sowed the teeth in these countries, allowing many people to know that China also has many excellent game works.

The story in it is touching and tender, and it is difficult to get out of the story after playing it.

Everything seemed to be developing in the direction Cao Yang once predicted:

At the beginning, everyone was busy doing martial arts and fairy tales. Now, there are gradually many small teams or independent studios developing more subdivided categories.

For example, there is a company in China called [Speeding Game]. When seeing the big guys taking advantage of martial arts RPG games, they took a unique approach and positioned the direction of game development on racing games.

Although EA's "Need for Speed" series abroad is already in the forefront, the speeding game can take a slightly less realistic route. Because there is not enough funds and connections to obtain authorization from major car manufacturers, they positioned the game as a more sci-fi racing game, which probably tells what cars around the world look like in 2022, and players can use these cars to transform and win in the competition.

Once this game was launched, it was immediately welcomed by players, especially Ome players.

Because it is an X2 engine, although it is a small company, the picture quality is still up to date. In addition to the performance, the program is not so powerful, so there are occasionally some small bugs, but these flaws will not affect players' evaluation of this game.
To be continued...