“Why are you suddenly thinking about making game consoles again? Didn’t I tell you before that game consoles are not part of our development plans?” Huang He said helplessly.
In fact, Huang He also wanted to develop game consoles. After all, no one wanted to see the game console industry in China remain at zero in the future. For a full 20 years, only Subor dared to launch a so-called next-generation game console in 2015.
However, this game console completely used the Android system, and all the games within it were Android games. It was essentially a TV output device for an Android phone. You could only play mobile games on the TV. A game console like this was doomed from the moment it was born.
Actually, with the current technology of Jiangnan Group, it was not impossible to create game consoles.
Even if they couldn't create game consoles at the level of Sony and Nintendo, if they assembled a computer, it could also be used as a game console.
The real key lay in the game lineup. Sony and Nintendo managed the game developers under their respective game consoles very strictly. Once they joined a platform, they were absolutely forbidden from joining any other platform.
Later, in order to compete with Xbox, Nintendo and Sony reached an agreement to deregulate some third-party developers, allowing their games to be released on both platforms simultaneously.
However, Nintendo still maintained strict control over its core games, such as Pokémon and The Legend of Zelda, which could only be played on Nintendo's own consoles.
These games had a solid player base of tens of millions. It was basically impossible to get these players to buy a game console produced by a brand new manufacturer.
The only thing that was slightly better in this world than in the previous life was the absence of a game console ban. However, society as a whole remained very wary and resistant to game consoles. The vast majority of parents would never allow such a thing as a game console in their homes.
Therefore, China had no market for game consoles. If they went abroad, they would basically be unable to compete with foreign companies.
So, regarding Leng Zhimeng's sudden idea of entering the game console industry, Huang He felt very troubled. He didn't know why his sister-in-law had come up with this idea.
“Brother-in-law, I think we can completely use the 00 game platform as a base to launch a game console. Our 00 game platform already has over 10 online games and hundreds of single-player games settled!” Leng Zhimeng said.
Following Huang He's "kill the monkey to scare the chicken" incident a few months ago, and Tengda's "Triumph" setting an astonishing record of over 300 million yuan in monthly revenue, the 00 game lobby experienced tremendous growth. Most domestic online game companies chose to settle on the 00 game lobby.
In any case, this did not affect them from continuing to maintain their existing game clients. They could also expand their user base through the game lobby, and only needed to pay Jiangnan Group a 30% toll. This was a worthwhile deal no matter how you looked at it.
Therefore, the progress of online games in the 00 game center was very smooth. At this time, there were only a dozen online games operating in China. Besides the online games under Shanda and NetEase, most online games from smaller companies had already settled on the oo game platform.
Moreover, there were dozens of online games currently under development or in agency negotiations, which had not yet started internal testing but were already discussing logging onto the platform with the oo game platform.
This had become a necessary step for almost all newly established online game companies. After all, except for a few large enterprises, these newly established online game companies had no channels of their own.
They had no channels for promoting games, nor for selling game cards.
Building these channels would require at least millions of yuan in startup capital, and would continue to consume a large amount of funds every month. It was far more cost-effective to hand over 30% of the profits to the oo game platform.
Everyone was a smart businessman and should rationally calculate their profits.
While there were still a few large game companies that were resisting the oo game platform and unwilling to hand over their 30% profit, currently, almost 100% of single-player game manufacturers had joined the oo game platform.
The reason was simple: there were no other game publishers in China.
Domestic single-player game manufacturers had always had very thin profits due to piracy, and were always small companies. In order to publish single-player games today, just burning CDs was a huge expense, let alone the later distribution costs.
Therefore, all single-player game companies could only rely on large game distributors to release their games, such as Shanghai Ubisoft and OA Games.
Then, both of these companies had successively gone out of business in 2003, as the impact of online games led to a sharp decline in single-player game sales.
Most single-player game developers, with the attitude of "if you can't beat them, join them," switched to online games, abandoning the development of single-player games which were difficult, unrewarding, and unprofitable.
The entire single-player game market was in a state of lament. The demise of these two physical game distributors became a natural consequence.
After the closure of the two physical game distributors, the only remaining distributor in the market was the oo game platform, an online distribution platform. Therefore, the remaining single-player game developers had no choice but to closely unite within the embrace of the oo game platform.
Fortunately, both Mr. Huang and Leng Zhimeng had a sentiment for single-player games. Therefore, they adopted an open policy and support for single-player games, such as the game's rebate plan.
As long as the game quality was excellent and it was a domestic game, a large portion of the platform fees could be refunded to increase the profits of single-player game developers.
In addition, they actively introduced blind boxes, encouraging various single-player game developers to develop their own blind boxes and game peripherals to expand new profit streams.
Therefore, the oo game platform currently had a very good reputation in the entire single-player game circle. Many manufacturers regarded Huang He as the savior of single-player games. Huang He had basically unified the domestic single-player game industry, and all newly developed single-player games were launched on the oo game platform every year.
Unfortunately, the quality of these single-player games was quite poor. Let alone releasing a game that could reach the level of World of Warcraft, not even a single game had managed to sell over 50,000 copies on the platform.
“If you think that these mediocre single-player games and online games are enough to support the sales of a game console, then you are too naive!” Huang He sighed, “These are far from enough. Even if I acquire Steam now, it would still be insufficient!”
“Really?” Leng Zhimeng’s mood suddenly became a bit dejected.
“By the way, why do you want to develop game consoles? What made you come up with this idea?” Huang He asked curiously. He knew that Leng Zhimeng had always been obsessed with game consoles.
However, Huang He had long dismissed Leng Zhimeng's idea, and Leng Zhimeng had never brought up the matter of game consoles. Why did she approach him again today? This was very unusual.
“I’ve been playing foreign AAA masterpieces every day recently and found that our country has no domestically produced AAA masterpieces. I thought that perhaps there was no market for AAA masterpieces in China. If there were game consoles, it could foster the birth of AAA masterpieces!” Leng Zhimeng said.
“Your idea is fundamentally flawed!” Huang He said, “It’s not that domestic consoles can give birth to AAA masterpieces. It’s the market for AAA masterpieces that must exist to foster AAA masterpieces!”
“Indeed, China does not have domestic consoles now, but Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft’s game consoles can all be sold in China, yet their consoles have never opened up the market. This indicates that the Chinese market does not accept game consoles. On the contrary, computers are currently the only market for single-player games.”
“You are trying to achieve the opposite of what you want and fishing with bait for a tree!” Huang He said bluntly. “If you want our China to have its own AAA masterpieces, there is only one way: to let the manufacturers currently producing computer single-player games make money, and at least billions in profit, so that they have the desire and capital to continue developing AAA masterpieces!”
“I knew it!” Leng Zhimeng muttered, then she pulled out a piece of paper as if by magic and handed it to Huang He. “Boss, this is the method I compiled to revitalize the Chinese single-player game market. See if you can implement it according to this policy!”
“Hmm…” Huang He’s eyebrows twitched. Good heavens, the corresponding policy was already prepared. Didn’t this mean he was being fished?
Huang He carefully read through the entire policy and then sighed in his heart. Leng Zhimeng’s original intention was this policy, and everything she said about building game consoles before was just to fool him.
Her original intention was to sell this policy to him.
So the question arose: why did Leng Zhimeng go through so much trouble?
The reason was simple: this policy was completely against the company’s interests and would even incur losses.
The policy was as follows:
First, the first policy was to completely exempt all platform fees for single-player games. This allowed single-player game manufacturers to receive all profits from games sold on the platform, while the company would subsidize servers, loan fees, and so on for free.
The second policy was very interesting: the 00 game platform would take the lead in bringing together all single-player game manufacturers to lower prices.
Currently, the prices of domestic single-player games were generally maintained at above 50 yuan. Leng Zhimeng hoped to reduce the price of all domestic single-player games to the level of 5 yuan per CD.