The prior calculations focused only on how much money Jiangnan had earned, not how much Boss Huang had earned. This was because there were also companies such as Tianxing Mobile, the Jiangnan Council, and Qiushang Qu Shui Cai Wei Shi, all of which Boss Huang held controlling stakes in. These companies experienced both profits and losses, so they could not be treated as a single entity.
Tianxing Mobile broke even, as a significant portion of its revenue was reinvested into technological development.
The Jiangnan Council, backed by Jiangnan Commerce, consistently received orders and also took on various projects from society. Although a small number of enterprises were still operating at a loss due to leadership issues, the majority were quite profitable.
Boss Huang generally held 20%-40% stakes in these companies. After dividends were distributed, the heavy industry sector alone contributed nearly 2 billion RMB in dividends to Boss Huang from the entire Jiangnan Council's enterprises.
The Du Le Li Palace Management Company was still undertaking maintenance and development of the Du Le Li Palace. An additional several tens of millions of US dollars had been spent, and redevelopment was expected to be completed in the latter half of the year.
Marvel Studios was currently only spending money and not making any, as its films had yet to be released.
Netflix was currently profitable and quite stable, with a net profit of approximately 100 million US dollars last year. However, no dividends were distributed to shareholders.
Blizzard earned a few hundred million US dollars globally in 2003.
The Western Mustang Fund's second phase had not yet been accounted for, so the final figures were uncertain. However, it was confirmed to be another astronomical sum of income.
US Priority Group was currently fully focused on developing its Weibo platform, with investments exceeding returns. However, its server rental platform, Versailles Palace, was exceptionally popular. The user base was setting new records each month. Currently, over 3,000 network enterprises in the United States had purchased services from Versailles Palace, generating over 10 million US dollars in monthly revenue for US Priority Group. This figure might seem modest, but this was only the development stage for the network server resource rental platform, and the monthly data continued to increase.
This company had already attracted significant attention from many capital investors. If not for the existence of the mysterious capital, US Priority, behind it, someone would have been eager to acquire Versailles Palace long ago.
Finally, Boss Huang still held a 20% stake in Google. These shares had not yet distributed any dividends, but their stock price had soared from 1 billion US dollars to 4 billion US dollars. With its terrifying growth rate, Google had now become a company with a market capitalization of 20 billion US dollars. Boss Huang's investment had quadrupled in just one year.
These were the approximate circumstances of all of Boss Huang's resources and enterprises. To be frank, given the current scale of Boss Huang's enterprises, they were still a bit short of the Fortune Global 500, as the Fortune Global 500 primarily ranked enterprises by scale rather than profitability.
However, in terms of personal wealth, Boss Huang's net worth was definitely within the top 100 globally, as the 100th richest person in the world only had a net worth of slightly over 1 billion US dollars.
Boss Huang's current net worth, by rough calculation, had already reached 20 billion US dollars. If his companies were to go public, it would not be unusual for his net worth to expand to 50 billion US dollars, making Boss Huang the richest person in the world.
Of course, this was referring to publicly recognized wealthy individuals. Those in the know understood that the names of truly wealthy people would not appear on such rankings. The truly rich preferred to hide their names and wealth as much as possible from the general public, to avoid being targeted by those who resented wealth.
It was more prudent to control everything from the shadows.
However, even accounting for those operating in the shadows, Boss Huang's net worth was sufficient to place him among the top 100 wealthiest individuals globally.
***
“Brother-in-law, can we really break into the Fortune Global 500?” Leng Zhiruo asked persistently. However, Boss Huang was lost in thought and did not respond to Leng Zhimeng. It was only when she realized her own thoughts that she shook her head and said, “We are still tens of billions of dollars away from the Fortune Global 500!”
“Really?” Leng Zhimeng retreated somewhat dejectedly. It seemed she wouldn't be able to show off.
“By the way, how is the preparation for the public beta of World of Warcraft coming along?” Boss Huang asked. The Jiangnan Group was cooperating wholeheartedly on the public beta of World of Warcraft, intending to leverage the game's synchronized global launch to generate more profits.
Boss Huang had already played the game himself, so he could confidently state that this game was even more enjoyable than the World of Warcraft in his previous life.
“Everything is ready. We have prepared 100 server clusters in one go: 70 for the south and 30 for the north!” Leng Zhimeng replied.
“Not enough!” Boss Huang shook his head. “Prepare another 100 clusters. I estimate that within a month at most, those 100 server clusters will all be in use!”
“Okay!” Leng Zhimeng nodded. Her understanding of World of Warcraft's potential was no less than Huang He's, as she was currently the first level 60 player in all of China.
Furthermore, Leng Zhimeng did not reach level 60 by manipulating data through backend access. She had leveled up from level 1 to level 60 completely, level by level.
This was undoubtedly a unique achievement domestically. And precisely because Leng Zhimeng had fully experienced the entire level 60 progression from beginning to end, she had compiled a lot of firsthand experience and submitted it to the planning department at Blizzard's headquarters.
Blizzard would likely disregard the experience reports of ordinary players, but this was an experience report submitted by their chairman's sister-in-law, and it was personally delivered by Boss Huang's men, so the treatment was entirely different.
Consequently, Blizzard read the entire suggestion thoroughly and implemented 60% of the revisions. The remaining 40% was either too labor-intensive to fix in the short term or Blizzard deemed it unnecessary to change.
It was also precisely because of Leng Zhimeng's experience report that World of Warcraft in this world became somewhat different from its counterpart in another world. Many settings that intentionally tormented players in terms of gameplay experience were improved, and a map guidance mechanism was also added.
Of course, this was not the simplistic automatic map navigation found in later free-to-play games, where clicking on a character would automatically guide them to an NPC's location. Although Boss Huang believed this to be a more user-friendly setting, it would also eliminate one of World of Warcraft's biggest features.
Boss Huang's original idea was to simply implement road signs. Clicking on a quest would then guide the player to walk along the road signs, which would be simple and convenient without appearing too simplistic.
However, what Boss Huang did not expect was that in his suggestion, Leng Zhimeng proposed an idea that even impressed him: the creation of a universal arcane magic called "Spirit Guide."
It essentially meant that players could consume a certain amount of mana to cast an arcane spell that required a long channeling time, summoning a navigation spirit. This spirit would automatically head towards the location of the first objective in the quest log, and players would simply need to follow the spirit.
This was functionally similar to road signs but was implemented in a very novel way. Such a spell was estimated to generate significant discussion among a large number of players. Boss Huang even believed that all future online games would likely incorporate this interesting magic designed by Leng Zhimeng.
He also thought that in the future, this navigation spirit could be used as a selling point for blind boxes, introducing navigation spirits with different skins. That would be wonderful...
Ahem.
Of course, some veteran World of Warcraft players might feel very dissatisfied upon seeing such content. For them, spending an hour searching for NPCs all over the city in World of Warcraft was also a phase of enjoyment.
And it seemed that all loyal World of Warcraft players really liked the setting of finding NPCs themselves.
However, this was merely survivor bias. Because these players remained, they could accept these complex designs. As for those who were unwilling to accept them, the vast majority likely quit the game after playing for a few hours.
In fact, despite the enormous player base of World of Warcraft, many players were scared away by its extremely complex game world and experience.
When World of Warcraft was first launched, although its ratings repeatedly broke new highs, the number of players worldwide was not large. This was because in the early stages, many aspects of World of Warcraft were frankly counter-intuitive.
It wasn't until later that many platforms introduced World of Warcraft add-ons, which significantly improved the game experience.
Among these add-ons, the NPC and quest locator add-on, the inventory management add-on, and the damage calculation add-on were hailed as the three essential add-ons for World of Warcraft. Almost all World of Warcraft players would use these three add-ons, otherwise, the gaming experience would be extremely poor.
And these were only three of the major add-ons. Thousands of add-ons with different functionalities were developed for World of Warcraft, and these add-ons effectively transformed a difficult game into a game with the difficulty of domestic Chinese online games.
This indicated that no matter how players claimed on forums to prefer a high-difficulty gaming experience, they actually preferred laziness and convenience deep down.
After incorporating Leng Zhimeng's suggestions and Boss Huang's own ideas, World of Warcraft itself integrated many functions that were previously only available through add-ons, significantly improving the player experience.
However, World of Warcraft's core combat settings, instance settings, lore, and so on, remained unchanged. In fact, the difficulty had even increased. Boss Huang was very much looking forward to the final results of World of Warcraft's global public beta.
However, before that, Boss Huang had one more thing to do.
“Pack up and accompany me to Fusang!” Boss Huang tapped Leng Zhimeng on the head and said.
“What are we going to Fusang for?” Leng Zhimeng was startled, then looked at Huang He with a hint of panic, clutching her slightly ample chest. “Brother-in-law, you’re not planning to do that kind of thing in Fusang, are you?”
“Get lost!” Boss Huang tapped her on the head again. “I’m going to Fusang for business. Someone invited your brother-in-law to attend an event, and I happened to be bored, so I’m going!”
“In short, are you going or not?” Huang He retorted.
“I’m not going!” Leng Zhimeng said without looking up. Wasn't it more fun to stay home and play World of Warcraft?
“This event is being hosted by Nintendo!”
“Brother-in-law, when do we leave? Right now? Should I start packing my clothes then!” Leng Zhimeng said, her spirits immediately soaring.