So everything in the future will ultimately land on this mobile game center. If it succeeds, the company's performance will see a new upturn. Even if sales cannot be changed, at least the financial reports will have highlights, and the board of directors will give me the opportunity to continue!
Edward Zamp thought to himself, and became even more expectant for this game center.
On January 21, 2005, after six months of research and development, the game centers of various mobile phone companies were launched simultaneously.
Of course, it was too late to pre-install the game center on newly manufactured phones. Major mobile phone companies released download installation packages online.
In addition, tens of millions of dollars were spent on online advertising and promotion, and most of this advertising fee went into the pockets of Google and Weibo.
It is worth mentioning that according to the originally agreed plan, a unified official website for the game center would be established online, and all mobile phone versions of the game center could find download and installation paths on this official website.
The reason for designing it this way was to save on advertising investment. When advertising, only the address of the game center's official website would need to be promoted, instead of promoting the official websites of each mobile phone brand one by one.
This was originally a very clever operation, and it would not have any other vested interests, because you could only install the game center of the brand whose mobile phone you bought, and there was no problem of competition.
Unfortunately, trouble arose with advertising costs.
As suggested by Motorola and other companies, since one game center could manage all mobile phones, all mobile phone brands should naturally benefit from it. Therefore, this advertising fee should be shared equally by all mobile phone brands. Motorola and Nokia, as large mobile phone enterprises, naturally agreed to this. However, those small mobile phone companies were not happy. Their market share was already small, and perhaps 90% of the downloads on the website were from Motorola and other companies, while only 10% belonged to them and a dozen other small enterprises.
Motorola could get tens of thousands of downloads a day, but they could only get a few hundred at most. Why should everyone share this advertising cost equally? Therefore, these small companies strongly advocated for the advertising costs to be allocated according to market share, which they considered to be a reasonable choice.
Motorola and others disagreed with this, because if calculated this way, the fees they had to pay were slightly more than advertising their own brand individually. Why should they be the scapegoat?
As a result, they could never reach a consensus and had to abandon the idea of cooperative advertising. They continued to promote themselves individually, not taking advantage of each other.
In this way, although various mobile phone brands were promoting the game center, their advertisements were constantly clashing, causing many companies to become angry and unhappy.
However, these were not problems at the moment. With the efforts of various major mobile phone brands, their promotional momentum was still considerable.
Most importantly, unlike the OO mobile phone game center of Jiangnan Group which did not get the recognition of some famous game manufacturers, this time the game center received strong support from various major game manufacturers, and many game IPs from major manufacturers were integrated into this game center.
For example, there were over twenty games from EA, including mobile game adaptations of top EA IPs such as Need for Speed, Medal of Honor, and FIFA.
In addition, Capcom, Ubisoft, and other companies also launched mobile versions of some games. For a time, the entire game center was booming. Many players were surprised to find that they could play these classic mobile games on their phones. The game centers launched by various mobile phone companies were highly praised, and the download volume on the first day exceeded one million.
This made Edward Zamp and other executives breathe a long sigh of relief, and then they began to fantasize about the game center completely defeating the OO mobile phone game center and occupying the entire mobile game market. Then they would increase the revenue sharing ratio of mobile phone brands, and pocket all the money from game developers, living in bliss!
After much ado, the game center finally began operations. On the other side, the OO mobile phone game center was naturally unwilling to let its opponents steal the show, so a developer conference was convened.
This was the second developer conference held by the OO mobile phone game center. However, unlike the first developer conference, this one was held online.
It was not that Jiangnan Group was unwilling to spend money, but rather that the developers participating in this conference were spread across the globe, totaling six to seven hundred people. And since this conference was held on short notice, it was unrealistic to expect them to pay their own way to attend.
Moreover, the OO mobile phone game center also held a large offline public developer conference every year. Therefore, it was decided that this developer conference would be held online.
Of course, considering the network speed, video conferencing was not feasible. The entire conference was a text-based conference, utilizing the ordinary OO group platform.
Essentially, the group owner and a few official representatives of the conference served as administrators. During public speeches, the entire group would be muted, and then the speaker would make their address.
Afterward, each participant would be given time for free discussion. However, these steps were actually meaningless. Most of the speakers spoke nonsense, and the conference participants' discussions were all chatting in the group. However, it was not entirely meaningless. For example, Leng Zhimeng, as the overall head of the OO mobile phone game center, delivered a speech full of practical information.
Of course, it was more of an announcement of the rules for the OO mobile phone game center than a speech.
Although the OO mobile phone game center had publicly stated when it was established that all individual game developers could release their games on the platform, this feature had been in a half-open state. While some games made by individual game creators had been successfully listed, many others were blocked, and their listing was delayed, causing unrest in the entire OO mobile phone game center development circle, which was the fundamental reason for convening this online developer conference.
Although many people in later generations said that this online developer conference was to compete with the opposite product, the developers participating in the OO mobile phone game center knew that this date had been set half a month ago, and it just happened to coincide.
In her speech, Leng Zhimeng stated that the reason why many games developed by individual developers were rejected in the past was not because the OO mobile phone game center was not sincere in providing a platform for everyone, but because the quality of the games was too poor.
This "poor" quality had two aspects: one was the poor quality of the game itself, meaning there were a lot of bugs. In the initial batches of games listed by individuals, a large number of bugs appeared, causing many players to become frustrated and abandon the game platform.
Therefore, all submitted games had to undergo about a week of various stability tests. If more than 60% of the game bugs exceeded the standard and could not meet the listing conditions, they would be rejected.
Another important reason was the shortage of staff in the review department, which could not meet the review needs of the increasing number of individual game developers, leading to delays in the review of some games.
Leng Zhimeng also pointed out that in addition to bugs in game code writing, there were also many problems in terms of gameplay. Although the OO mobile phone game center publicly stated that it did not restrict any game design or gameplay, and all types of games could be listed.
However, in the actual review process, it was found that many games began to play on the edge of what was acceptable. This was understandable at first, as the problem was not taken seriously. After all, if a pixelated game's suggestive content could still evoke feelings, then that person was likely a rare pervert.
But when many text-based games, traditionally known as gala games by service providers,
This ultimately led to the listing of many poor-quality games in the early stages. The OO mobile phone game center successively received penalties from relevant authorities in several countries, which further obstructed the approval of many games.
In her speech, Leng Zhimeng explained many issues in detail, causing many attendees to become invisible, likely because those poor-quality games were developed by themselves.
Of course, if it were just explanations, they would be useless. Therefore, Leng Zhimeng went on to announce that the OO mobile phone game center could not sustain this situation and had ultimately decided to implement a dual review plan.
Firstly, for software review, the OO mobile phone game center had developed a tool specifically to test the stability of game operation. All developers were required to pass the test of this software before submitting their games. Otherwise, they should not submit, and any submissions would be directly rejected.
Secondly, for gala games, a user review system would be adopted. If users complained about game content, the game could be removed at any time.
Then Leng Zhimeng announced that under these new review standards, the backlog of over 1600 games would be fully listed on the OO mobile phone game center, which was met with cheers from all developers in this super OO group of over 10,000 people!